Just Justice
by Litestryke
Summary: It's been 2 years since the second Gigantomachy has ended as Nico di Angelo never felt more powerful. But his world turns upside-down when he's asked by a certain dark knight to join a team of superkids. Join Nico as he and the rest of the YJ try and face sinister foes while Nico tries to come to terms with past demons. 1st story. No flames please!
1. Chapter 1

**Yo! This is my 1st time making a fanfic! Please forgive me for any grammatical mistakes I've made. Also I might get certain parts of the canon show wrong(specially in season 2)...so please keep any flames mild...**

 **I drew inspiration for this story by reading another one called 'Dark knights of Gotham'. It's really good!**

 **Alright! Disclaimer:Young justice and PJO-HOO belong to me...NOT! But their respective owners.**

 **BTW, HOO ends 2 years before YJ season 1 starts!**

 **Now on with the story!**

 **JUST JUSTICE**

 **Gotham city,July 5, 8:30 p.m, 2010, Greenwich time**

It was nighttime in Gotham, the crime capital of USA, protected by it's Dark night and his colourful sidekick. Now a normal night in Gotham would involve a majority of citizens trying to keep off the streets, gangs and other petty criminals and mob bosses doing all sorts of crimes while trying to make sure they wouldn't get caught by GCPD or that damn bat!

But, Tonight wouldn't be a normal night in Gotham city. For if one were to go take a peek at crime alley( not that anyone sane would go, mind you) they would find a young boy of about 17 years of age, dressed in some pretty odd clothes with a walking stick in his left hand.

The boy was wearing a near pitch black cloak that reached his ankles and made it almost impossible to see anything underneath the hood. If the cloak were to be taken off by some chance, one would find a boy with shaggy black hair and deathly pale pale skin eyes seemingly looking like a void of infinite darkness.

This boy was no ordinary boy by any chance. But, enough beating around the bush. Let's get on with the story shall we?

-I'M JUST A LINE DONT LOOK AT ME-

Nico di angelo was tense. Yes tense. Why? Well, when you spend 2 whole years trying to track down a guy whose hard to find while constantly hunting down spirits that escaped damnation thanks to an angry goddess...well you tend to get exhausted mentally.

Nico's thoughts were mainly on his hard to find target, Andrew "Andy the bloody" Lawrence a serial killer who has killed god alone knows how many. Brother of Bryce Lawrence, sons of Orcus, the greek/Roman god of punishment. Ever since the giant war when Nico killed Bryce by "ghostifying" him, Andy made it his personal mission to avenge his brother by killing Nico. Of course, he found that he would have to go through the Roman AND greek camps to even reach Nico. Not to mention he was quite powerful himself and would have to face Hades/Pluto's wrath. So like a coward he ran away and hid as well as he could. He had made deals with all sorts of monsters and criminal mortals to amass an army begin enough to get him.

Meanwhile Nico was tasked by Hades to hunt down all 681 souls that escaped during the giant war. Thanatos couldn't do it since was busy since thousands of people die everyday for whatever reason. While Nico did this, he also took to being trained by the dead spirits to better his skills and learn new things. He learnt from warriors like Achilles how to fight with different fighting styles, people like Hitler how to negotiate and talk(along with some respect for command and some table manners), about modern weapons like guns and grenades and how to use them in conjunction with weapons like swords,shields,etc. He watched movies like "Equilibrium" and "Wanted" to create his style of "gun fu" and integrate it with his close combat styles. Heck he learned from the soul of BRUCE LEE OF ALL PEOPLE for martial arts!

His personal life wasn't that interesting really. He finally manned up and revealed his crush to Percy and told Will he wasn't really interested in any relationship currently. He also found out that apparantly Leo was alive and flying around on his mecha-dragon Festus with formerly punished titaness Calypso in tow, exploring the World beyond. He often kept in contact with him through his newly invented L-phone, a device Leo made for all demigods to use so they could use phones without having to attract monsters. It was a marvel really, it was like a normal phone, only it could last upto 5 days even if you used it continously and only needed a max 1 and a half hours to get fully charged and also had a 'mist-clearer', an attribute that allowed it's user to look through the mist as if it were nothing through it's camera mode. Wasn't cheap though, he charged like 20 drachmas per phone!

Nico often kept in contact with him, mainly since he really knew what he makes. He provided Leo with lots of raw stygian iron(with Hades's permission, of course) only on the promise that they keep this deal between themselves. Leo looked a little downfaced on that condition but immediately set to it.

Leo had made for him 2 berettas made of pure stygian iron, that bullets made of the same metal and silver(he also ran into creatures like werewolves and some...troublesome humans). With Calypso's help, Leo was thankful enough to also give him some kevlar-like armor that was fireproof and bulletproof. The armor was flexible and lightweight so it wouldn't restrict his movement much.

Currently, Nico was walking towards an abandoned apartment complex that was due for demolition next week, if the sign above the entrance was anything to go by. Nico knew better though. Talking to various souls in the underworld helped him learn that he had been recently hiring various humans to kill the nearby residents just so no one would notice any suspicous behaviour coming from he building.

Nico stood in front of the 6-storey building and looked around. The structure was surrounded by similar buildings that were only different from this one in terms of height. He expanded his soul-sensing power to see just where his target was and and what all threats and traps there were.

 _'Strange_ ', Nico thought. He doesn't seem to have that big an army'. He had 2 whole years and he knew Andrew isn't stupid, He could probably guess how powerful Nico had become!

So why could he sense only a few laistrygonians, Dracanae,empousai and humans in the building aside from the bastard's soul?

' _Doesn't matter. I'm so close. I wont let him escape'_ he thought as kicked the entrance and rolled in taking out his berettas from under the cloak.

He was instantly blinded and had a ringing sound in his ears. It took him a full minute but he recovered. The lights were on showing that he was in a reception room with the recption desk, 2 armchairs an elevator door and 2 other doors next to it one of which was a fire escape door that led to a series of stairs.

Suddenly he hear a voice coming from his far left "NICO! GLAD YOU COULD MAKE IT! LIKE THE FIREWORKS PRESENT? HOPE YOU LIKED HOW I MADE YOUR ENTRANCE FLASHY!"

" **ANDREW"** Nico thought darkly before shooting right at speaker at his left without even looking just in a split second, with point-blank aim and accuracy. He looked around and now noticed the CCTV camera on the ceiling and promptly shot it in the lens.

He detected 2 humans behind the door(not the fire escape) the only other life forces he could detect on this floor. Nico just took out a bronze like sphere, roughly the size of his palm, pressed a few buttons gears on it . The LED screen showing 5:00 and immdeiately started counting down. He gently rolled the sphere towards the door whre it stopped. He quickly and silently took the dorr next to it which led to a staircase. ' _Damn this'll be a looong night_ ' he sighed looking at the sheer number of stairs he'd have to climb to reach the top floor where he detected Andy to be.

Imediately, he started the long,boring and annoying process of climbing stairs.

-JUSTALINEJUSTALINEJUSTALINE-

. **Pissed.** Turns out the bastard had an army of ROBOTS somehow that could tank some punishment. No wonder there were so few monsters and humans in the building. Nico can't sense robots at all since they're non-living, thus having no soul!

The lower part of his hood had been burnt off revealing the black pants and combat boots he had which slightly bullet resistant(enough to stop them from piercing his skin,maybe but he'd still feel the force behind it).

He had only 2 floors to go now. As he neared the door of the 5th floor, suddenly an empousa stumbled out screeching only to be turned into dust by a hail of bullets. Nico immediately activated 2 of his incendiary bombs,threw them into the hallway and just calmly scaled the stairs 2 at a time, not even turning his head back when 2 loud 'booms' that shook the 2 whole floors, followed by various human and inhuman howls and screams of pain and anguish. This was a process that he'd repeated every time he passed by a door, though last 3 had a shit-ton of those infernal machines!

Finally he reached the 6th floor. Releasing a sigh of relief for no longer having go over any more stairs and just getting this done, he kicked the door open, berettas pointing down each side of the hallway. After a full 3 minutes of slowly walking and scanning and determing that theren't any other life sources here, aside from Andrew's, he approached the door on the far left end of the hall, 5 doors before it. He stood in front of it, just standing, gazing calculatively at it.

He suddenly unloaded both clips of his berettas on the door, the bullets punching through the weak wood, going in every direction. He immediately kicked it open, his reloaded left beretta in his left hand, and pure stygian iron knife in his right hand in a backhand way.

He scanned the room. It seemed pretty ordinary, with a bed at the far end, asmall window and bedside lamp next to it, a small broken TV in front. That is if you don't count the 2 humanoid robots that looked like those purple mutant hunters from 'X-men:Days of future past' only black instead of purple and with 2 missile launchers on their shoulders. They had quite a few bullets puncturing their eyes and chest area, courtesy of yours truly.

He narrowed his eyes and yelled "Just come out already, ya motherfucka! There's nowhere else for you to run"!

"Who says I'm running?" said a voice from behind the bathroom door. Slowly the door opened and out came a boy of 18, dressed in medieval greek armor, hands over his head.

Andrew Lawrence, the blond, sickly-green eyed son of Orcus, eyes flashing with sick amusement and burning fury scarcely hidden in his eyes came out, a sly smirk on his face. He didn't seem to have any weapons on himself despite the armor, bit Nico still stayed vigilant.

Bitibg back another scowl, started "Andrew Lawrence, son of Orcus, traitor of Ro-" he suddenly felt massive pain in his left arm. Looking down, he saw what looked like a knife wound with his blood pouring out. Looking up, he saw Andy holding 2 scalpels in his hands, the right one bloody with his blood.

Suddenly the smirk turned into a scowl. "I've been waiting for this day" he said. Rushing forward . Nico was able to wrap his cloaks remains around himself, willing the darkness to come from under the cloak and wrapping around him like semi-circular bubble. He could hear metallic screeching outside. "2 **years** it's taken me! Finally! After All this time! Do you know how much planning and precision it took to get you here? I knew you'd come for me all alone thinking you had the upper hand thanks to all your friends! But guess what, I've made friends too! And boy haven't I felt better than ever! I knew you'd eventually come for me. My messages and art must've reached you quite intact!"

Eyes glowing red with fury, Nico burst out of the black bubble, attacking Andrew with his sword . How dare he just laugh off the murder of so many innocent people !

Another stab, this time in his right wrist. Shit he couldn't use either of his hands anymore! Neither for shooting, since his aim would be way too off, plus the recoil would hurt like a bitch nor for his knifes nor swords. Good thing he had more tricks up his sleeves.

"You're wrong about one thing though. I didn't come alone".

The window suddenly cracked with Andrew immediately yelling in pain, clutching his back.

 **Across the street on the adjacent rooftop**

Nico hadn't been so arrogant to think that Andy wouldn't have something prepared for Nico after 2 years, which is why he had the foresight of having 2 US marines uniform dressed skeletons following behind him from quite a distance afar, both having sniper rifles. They had both shot at Andrew exactly at the same time at his back. Once again they looked down the laser sight of their scopes, aiming at his head this time.

 **Back in the room from where we left off**

Andrew was able to duck down in time before he his brains got splattered all over the walls. He immediately pulled out a gleaming M9. Possibly celestial bronze and shot at Nico's head. He shadow-travelled through his cloak, said clothing also coming through with him under the bed.

Multiple bullets either bounced or burrowed into his partially bullet-proof suit. He hadn't even seen him move and yet he was already at the bed's foot, the M9's nozzle touching his forehead, green eyes glowing with glee.

"Once I put your head on a pike, I'm gonna carve a message into yer little telling that bitch of a praetor why you shouldn't cross me! Then I'm gonna -" interrupting him mid-monologue using a tendril of solid darkness to yank him off his feet, he shadow-travelled out to the 1st place in Gotham that came to his mind.

 **Unknown place,unknown time**

Eyes black as night fluttered open. Their owner slowly got up, immediately hissing in pain from the injury in his right wound. The young(old?) son of Hades looked around, then on the surface of the rooftop he was half-laying on. Getting on his feet and slowly walking towards roof's ledge, he looked across the street, seeing the large letters of GOTHAM CITY POLICE DEPARRTMENT(GCPD) illuminated in bright neon yellow. Now, some of you might be wondering, how our favourite demigod could read these words in perfect English when he's dyslexic thanks to being a demigod. However he had gone to lady Hecate, greek goddess of magic to create a spell that would erase the dyslexia symptom of all demigods using a spell. Of course, magic comes with a price.

And Nico paid that price. Badly.

" _Now's not the time to think of the past. What's happened has happened. All I can do is learn from from it and think of the future while still standing back to understand that every second of Today all, that's why it's called the ''present'_ ' thought Nico darkly and wisely.

He pulled out his H-phone, checking the time. Seeing it was 11:59, he thought "G _ood. I'm not late. God alone knows what the flying rodent does when kept waiting"._

"Glad to see you're not late."' said a menacing, dark voice, growling with with each word.

If Nico was surprised, he didn't show it(not that you could see through the shadow his cloak's hood cast on him) since he sensed his soul as soon as he got his head straight.

He turned around, seeing a dark figure with gleaming white lensesand pointed ears from his head gazing at him. He remained partially hidden within the shadows cast by

the tall building nest to the one they stood on, though Nico could see through the dark the bat-themed black and grey kevlar armor of the dark knight of Gotham.

"So, what was so important that you had to practically demand from my go-to tech guy that you need to meet me here?"asked Nico with genuine concern and curiousity, for if someone like Batman were to go to such lengths like finding his hard-to-track friend simply to contact him, it was a need for concern.

"remember the favour **that** from a year ago?' Batman asked gruffly.

Nico tensed up, not enough to let even someone like Batman be able to spot any hints/signs though. For the Dark knight to ask him, **him** of all peopleof a favour, especially considering the fact that Batman generally likes to work alone unless he can take his dear sidekick Boy Blunder on board or has to(like when Earth is under attack or he fights someone who can be beat by

only certain things/beings like Superman,Zatara,etc) and that too of what had happened with them almost a year ago was enough to make him really worried.

"What is it?" asked Nico, letting a little bit of his concern actually slip out.

"What do you think of joining a group of youngsters working as a covert ops team for the league?"

Yeah, things were now going to be very,very interesting.

 **END PROLOGUE**

 **Fellow members and lovers of fanfiction, PJO-HOO and DC(marvel lovers you're invited as well!) and especially of Nico di Angelo, Litestryke proudly presents to you "Just Justice"a story filled with adventure, betrayal, love, loss and betrayal as well as pure madness(the fun kind, not the pure evil psycho type) as Nico di Angelo faces down all the seemingly endless odds that pile up against him as he tries to just survive the crazy journey known as life.**

 **Stay tuned for more dear readers, as I put our fav demigod go through a perilous journey with twists and turns with multiple surprise guests you'd definitely never come seeing on a fic involving YJ!**


	2. 1:Decisions,decisions and introductions

**And we're back true readers! Chapter 1 begins now!**

 **Again disclaimer: YJ and HOO belong to their respective owners.**

 **Chapter 1 begin!**

 **CHAPTER 1**

 **Decisions, Decisions and introductions**

 **Hades palace,capital of Underworld, July 6, 5:30 pm in the land of the living, Greenwich time**

The Underworld. The land of the dead. Kingdom of Hades. A hellish landscape of death and darkness. And of course, home to one Nico di Angelo.

Nico was currently in his room which was in the west wing of Hades's palace. The room was moderately sized with a large queen-sized deep violet bed with silky sheets and silver bed railings. 2 large double-hung windows that provided a view of Elysium, the fields of punishment, the fields of asphodel, the mountain where an entrance to tartarus(pit of damnation) was hidden, and the rivers Styx, Lethe and Phlegethon were on the wall adjacent to the one the bed was against. The catches were made of pure gold while the rails were made of pure black mahogany wood.

Opposite to his bed was a a closet, again made of dark mahogany. The closet doors had various lines of bright yellow and red all criss-crossing over the other, forming vivid images of people dying in different ways, be it suicide, war,etc. The ceiling also had various portraits of death though accompanying them were drawings of his father, Hades, his stepmother Persephone and Thanatos himself. Inside the bed were various rows of clothes and robes all ironed and hung/folded their colour scheme being predominantly black and grey with ocassional red and white

Next to his bed was a small bedstand with a porcelain vase and his H-phone on it. In the vase were 2 black roses.

Currently our lovable demigod was lying down on the bed, staring up at the ceiling dressed in a a plain black t-shirt and some black boxer shorts revealing his short shaggy black hair, his slightly pale skin and well-defined muscles. He still often worked out when he could, doing about 80 pushups with15 tons and 50 pullups practicing on his hand-to-hand, his swordsmanship,his aim and accuracy. His cloak and armor were currently being repaired. Nico was saddened and ashamed at the cloak's state. It was his most treasured item, aside form the little Hades figurine sister was never able to give him. His father, Hades had given him the cloak. It was specially enchanted to be capable of radiating it's darkness and cast shadows even if one were to cast a torch light right at it.

He was currently having conflicting thoughts about Batman's offer. Basically it was to join a team of kids, 3 of whom were proteges of certain league members, pretending to be a member himself, but in reality he would be observing the team and keeping them out of anything too big for them to handle. Batman had told him that there was no pressure but he'd have to give his final answer by tomorrow morning at 9:00 am. He'd also given him a tablet showing where the team's base of operations would be along with information on each member's abilities and some limited history and psych profiles.

Nico smiled, just by an inch at the memory of the young Robin. He had a score to settle with him.

Nico was curious about Aqualad, the atlantean. Was it possible that he and King Orin knew of him since he was an ally of Jackson(as Orin is in Percy's dad, Lord Poseidon's court or so he'd heard) ?

On one hand, this could turn out very bad. Nico's anti-social tendencies and distrust could tear apart the whole team. He wasn't too trusting of others except a select few and with good reason. His own sister left him simply cause she wanted to escape responsibility and joined Lady Artemis' evil lesbian club. Then Jackson went back on his word to protect her. Don't even get him started on Minos! Plus, he was the son of a death god. He had powers relating to death and darkness. Who would want some half-life like around them?

On the other hand, these people knew next to nothing about him. This could be a chance for him to start over and maybe...maybe new friends. People he could be comfortable with. Plus he owed Batman after all especially since he was using **the favour.**

All these intermixing thoughts had caused him to consult various people. Most of them gave him answers like 'just do what your gut says'(Jason,Piper and Percy) or 'meh not sure really'(leo and Annabeth). Frank and Hazel said that it might be a good start to make new friends. Thanatos was oddly supportive of it. He then revealed that sometimes the justice league helped ease his and Hades's workload a little since they try to save lives. So they would have a slightly lesser number of souls to work on. Plus, Nico could act as a representattive for Hades to the justice league so there's misunderstandings between them.

So, basically he was still in a dilemma despite the sheer number of people he'd consulted.

So what now?

To join or to not join?

Eyes previously squinting (at a particular ancient greek armoured spartan that was headless with blood gushing out like a fountain some rich, sick-minded businessman who wouldn't mind spending a fortune on) now widening in realization, he sat up on his bed, his legs dangling on the edge now.

There was one person he hadn't spoken to yet.

Someone knocked on the door. Nico imeditaely was able to sense who this person was.

Huh. What a coincidence. The very person he'd wanted to talk to just now.

Saying a come in, Nico immediately stood up and scanned the woman who entered his room now.

She was the most beautiful creature to walk any plane of existence, be it Earth or Olympus with her eyes black as night holding happiness and her beautiful hair, straight as a line and black as their eyes cascading down to her knees like a soft and dark curtain of warmth and perfect unblemished, dark coppery skin, much darker than his sister Hazel. Her angular face and and thick, pouty ruby red lips smiling at him warmly. Her nails were manicured with red nail polish. She was dressed in a black shoulderless, strapless dress that seemed to be woven from the softest velvet. It had a slit running from her right thigh down to her ankle, revealing the alluring flesh of her right leg underneath and the black high heel. The dress was low enough to reveal her huge breasts which seemed to be double the size of his head. The dress seemed to only add to all the perfect curves she had in the right place. It was studded with various precious gems of multiple colours, shaped out like flowers.

Looking at her, Nico could say without hesitation that this woman was was the most beautiful being in the entire universe and could make the slut(I mean love!love sorry hehe) goddess Aphrodite green with envy. No man was worthy enough to have herto touch her, not even set their unworthy eyes upon her.

None except his father.

For this woman was none other than Persephone, goddess of flowers, springtime and joy, queen of the underworld, wife of Hades.

And his stepmother.

And his new, surrogate mother.

Now, dear readers, you might be thinking 'Back up. _Surrogate mother? The hell?!"_

Fear not, dear readers. Allow me to explain this to you.

You see, shortly after the giant war ended, you all know of how Nico got man enough to reveal his crush on Percy, right? Well, that courage also made him test his luck out with his stepmom, asking her to please forgive him, his father and his now deceased mother.

He said he'd do anything to gain her forgiveness and to mend the broken bonds of their 'family''. How did he accomplish this feat and prevent her from pulling off a Hera? Well...that's a story for another day.

"So, how are you doing my dear son?"asked Persephone in that warm, melodious voice that he has grown to love.

"Mother"Nico said as he walked towards her hurridly and hugged her, his head snuggled in between her massive boobs.

Äw, I missed you my sweet little rose thorn"said Persephone. Nico smiled. He always liked being called Rose thorn by her.

"Sorry for not greeting you when I came back. Father kept going on about the pros and cons accepting Batman's offer while you were tending to the garden outside."said Nico sheepishly, his left hand rubbing his hair.

Äh, your father told me. Is it true that the Batman wants you join a team of young superheroes"?

"Yeah

"then what's the problem? Why not join them"? Asked Persephone curiously though she had a good guess on the why.

"well, it's just that I'm not sure if it's a good idea that I should join this team. You knnow I still have trust issues. My presence might break the team's unity. Plus, look at me. I'm a death god's son. Who would want anything related to death around them?"

"Nico, listen. Understand. They might not like you or trust you in the first place. But I didn't like your father at first either. You know of how much I loathed your father years ago. And I detested you not even 2 years before. Now look at us. We could never be more closer."

"What I'm trying to say is that nothing is perfect and you'll certainly have a rocky start with them. But give it time and you might actually enjoy their company soon. Just like I did with my husband and with you. Just give it a chance."she said sagely.

Nico pondered on her words and smiled. She was right! Maybe he should give this a chance. You never know after all...

"Thanks mom. You're the best." said Nico as he hugged her again.

Äw, you're making me blush"said Persephone as she stroked his hair softly and hugged him to her massive bosom.

"Now I believe you have a call to make with a certain bat and dress up nicely for the team tomorrow."

Yes mother"said Nico as Persephone went out, probably back to the garden of the underworld as he flipped out his black H-phone and called Batman.

* * *

Persephone was just walking through the shadowy halls of the underworld. After turning a few corners through the maze of dark hallways of the palace, she finally made a left, walking towards a 14 feet tall majestic door made of pure gold and the blackest iron with a bident-like design on it.

Without breaking her stride she walked towards the door that suddenly but slowly opened by some unseen force. After she walked in, the door subsequently closed with her still walking in the throne room.

Persephone didn't pay mind to her surroundings only looking at the man sitting on the majestic throne made of iron and bone. The man seemed to be in his early 30's, dressed in a black button-up suit, black pants with a golden zipper. He had shaggy black hair similar to Nico and eyes that had pure black sclera and blood red irises His faec had a slight french style mustache and goatee combo. Before Persephone had entered, he seemed to be gazing at the ground in front of his throne. As soon as she entered he locked eyes with her and smiled openly.

"I'm already feeling better by just seeing you my queen." said Hades, supreme ruler of the dead and the Underworld( and low level monsters to some extent) and father to our hero.

"So am I ,my king" siad Persephone as she walked up to him and on entering his personal space, sat down on his lap and wrapped her arms around his neck.

"Did you talk with Nico?" inquired Hades as he wrapped his arms around her slim waist hugging her to him.

"Yes. He was a little unsure on what to do, so I gave him some advice." said Persephone as she kissed Hades' cheek softly. " I must ask, why do you want him to join this league's team?" she asked curiously.

Hades gazed into her eyes for a few seconds, then sighed and said "Well by joining this team he could act as an ambassador for the Greco-Roman pantheon and the underworld specific-"

"Don't lie to your wife, hubby" Persephone said sternly with narrowed eyes.

Grunting again, he spoke quietly "I...I just want him to make friends. Actual friends who won't judge him or know of his dark history. It pains me when I think of how he has so few friends amongst the demigods." He revealed truthfully. " I just dont want him to be alone anymore."

"Awww, you're so sweet." said Persephone hppily to which Hades grunted in reply.

Suddenly, she started smirking. "Well my king, I believe you deserve a reward for this good deed. Afte all" she said lowly and lustfully while shifting herself so now she could rub her nether regions against his, "as your queen it is my duty to serve you in anyway" she said as she kissed him on the lips with increasing after each word.

Hades was suddenly smirking but still grunting. His pants were getting quite tight..."yes...I believe I do" he replied in a husky tone as they kissed while she grinded herself against him, feeling his eagerness through the layers of fabric as he unzipped her dress using the silver zipper that reached to her lrge, peachy bottom.

SMUTSMUTSMUT!NOSEXORUFUCKS!...YET!

 **July 8,Moint Justice, Happy Harbor, Rhode island, 8:00 am...**

Mount justice. The 1st HQ of the Justice league, located in the quiet town of Happy harbour, now a mere tourist attraction ever since it was busted by villains like Joker. Of course people were prohibited from going inside since you don't know what you might find in there.

The perfect base for a learning blacks ops team of the league.

Currently in the living room area of the cave-system in the hollow mountain, Robin the boy wonder, 1st sidekick(Protege!) in the modern world, partner of Batman was present in a courful kevlar armor composed of a black cape, red kevlar shirt, black spandex pants and a yellow utility belt alongside a slew of superhumans. There were the league members, King Orin/Arthur Curry or as the World knows him better as Aquaman. Flash, fastest man alive dressed in his frictionless redsuit and of course, the tall, dark imposing figure of his mentor, Batman, Gotham's dark knight!

Then there were his friends. On his immediate left, a young boy with jet black hair, bright blue eyes wearing a black superman t-shirt under a brown full-sleeve jacket and blue jeans. This was superboy, clone of the man of steel himself, literally 16 weeks old.

And wearing a slightly unnoticeable scowl on his face.

" _Probably hoped he could meet superman here"_ thought Robin with a slight frown. It was quite well known that the man of steel was actively trying to avoid his clone which caused Superboy to be...well a little more short-tempered. Hopefully they could mend their relationship soon

Next to him was the red haired, green-eyed fastest boy alive(and his best friend) Kidflash, dressed in a yellow suit similar to his mentor Flash's.

To his right was a young, muscular african-american boy with short-cropped blond hair. He was actually the young Atlantean Aqualad, the apprentice of Aquaman.

Currently Robin was waiting patiently for what Batman and the rest of the league had in store for them as a result of their actions 3 days ago.

"This place used to serve as the the original base for the justice league It's been brought back into service again." said Batman in this usual creepy deep dark growly voice. "Since you're determined to fight the good fight, you will work as a covert team going on missions for the league" he continued.

"real missions?" asked Robin excitatedly. He coudn't believe it! He would get to go on actual missons!Guess being grounded from using any sort of electronics and then doing gruesome practice for 2 whole days was worth it.

"Yes, but covert misssions employed by us" said Batman.

"However, cadmus proves that the bad guys are getting smarter. Which is why you will serve as a covert ops team for the league"said Aquaman picking off from where batman left off.

"Yeah. There's a reason we wear these big symbols on us" said Flash, pointing with his right thumb at the lightning bolt symbol on his chest.

" The 7 of you will be that team" said Batman as he craned his neck a little to look behind them.

Robin and the others turned around to see a bald green skinned man dressed in ablack bodysuit and blue cape with 2 red stips forming an 'X' over his chest. He had blank yellow eyes and no nose(like Voldemort!).THis was J'onn J'onzz or better known as Martin manhunter, another core member of the Justice League.

Next to him was a young green-skinned girl with orange-red hair that reached below her shoulders. She had a few freckles on her face. She was wearing a white shirt with red X over her chest similar to Manhunter and a blue cape with a blue skirt that reached below her knees. She also had blue boots as well. She seemed a little skittish and nervous.

"This is Miss martian. She's Martian manhunter's niece." said Batman.

"Liking this gig more and more" said Kidflash into Robin's ear before superspeeding to the space next to Miss martian and introducing himself and the others in an obviously flirtatious manner.

As Kidflash still talked in a ridiculous manner to Miss martian when suddenly a thought occurred to him about something Batman said. "Hey Batman, I thought you said there will be _7_ of us?" asked Robin with a curious look on his face with various ideas on who could possibly be their 7th member.

"Yeah Bats, where is he?" asked Flash in an equally curious tone as everyone looked towards him.

"He should arriving here right about-" he was interrupted by a flash emanating from the Zeta beam platform(teleportation devices the league use to access various places on Earth instantaneously from anywhere and the Watchtower, the JL's current HQ) followed by the cave's automated system's voice robotically saying "RECOGNIZED B06. GHOST KING"

As the flash ended, a dark figure came into view. The male was casually but cautiously( he could he was actually cautious. Being trained by the World's greatest detective does that to ya.) walking towards them. He was wearing some sort of eerily black cloak. Like unnaturally black. The cloak reached down to his ankles . The hood seemed to cast a shadow over the person's entire face. The cloak also seemed to hide everything about him. His stature, his build, his facial features everything! Robin couldn't even figure out if the person was male or female! He could only tell that this guy seemed to have a tense and coiled stance as if ready to jump into action

" _But why am I feeling like I know this guy?"_ robin thought. He felt like he should know him. It was almost like as if it was at the tip of his tongue. Ughhh, this is so frustrating!

"Well, speak of the devil and there he is." said Batman in an even tone.

"Sorry if I'm late. See a black cat crossed my path and since I didn't wanna make my already rotten luck worse I took the long way. Then while bringing the happy meal I bought from the local Mcdonalds here, I had to scare off some mugger who pounced on me. Then I suddenly slipped on a banana peel some asshat just dropped on the sidewalk, causing me to lose my footing. I regained my balance with no problem, but my meal wasn't so lucky for _somehow_ the happy meal bag fell right into an open manhole conveniently located right next to where I fell. After spending some time mourning my poor burgers and fries which I'd bought enough of to share a tiny of portion of with y'all I finally resumed my journey and well, here I am." he said in a flat, seemingly dark, raspy voice that sounded borderline demonic. It caused a shiver to go up everyone's spines, even his. Except Batman's. Why? Cause he's the goddamn Batman! However after everyone heard his strange explanation about the things he went through while on the way here, they were all a bit miffed. Seriously, it just sounded a bit too ridiculous to be true, especially concerning a guy who looks and has a voice like the Grim reaper!

Shaking his head a little at the pretty unreal expanation given, Batman immediately adressed the team group in a no-nonsense tone "Team, I'd like you to meet Ghost king".

"Pleased to meet you all. I hope we can work as awell-oiled machine" said Ghost king with that same dark tone with a neutral twinge to it.

Eyes widening in recognition finally Robin exclaimed "GK?! That's you? Damn you look different from the last time we met"

"Yeah well lot can happen in a year birdboy. BTW I still have a score to settle with you."

"ha. Like you could beat me"

"Well this time I have a special trick up my sleeve. And I'm gonna finally even the level between us." Nico said a little smugly

"Bring it! I can deal with anything ya throw at me!" said Robin with confident smirk on his face.

However, Kidflash finally asked "Dude. You know this guy?"

"Yeah. GK visits Gotham a lot. And he's helped me and Bats a few times. He sometimes takes help from us too. He's got really creepy but cool superpowers." said Robin

"Really" asked Kidflash curiously before standing right at Nico's side and asking him who he is, what's with the grim reaper motif and what can he do rapidly and almost talking superquick,

Nico however was able to here the full set of questions and replied in that same raspy dark voice "Well for one, as Robin said, I can do some weird shit that might even scare you a bit .I am not gonna dignify that second question about my obviously badass clothing. And since you want to know my name so badly" saying the second sentence in a rather sarcastic manner and taking hold of his hood with his black glove covered hands and pulling it off, revealing his scraggly black hair, black eyes and pale face with a slight (all of which together had rguably handsome features which caused Miss Martian's green cheeks to have a tinge of red) he continued, now in a rather , smooth and normal voice "name's Nico di Angelo"

 **I'm back bitches! Sorry for taking a whole week to deliver you chapter 2/chapter 1. I apologise for the shit ton of errors I call the prologue but I was kinda in a hurry of making it cause I had a deadline to fullfill back then. Plus it was my 1st time okay?! Have a little pity for me. So Nico finally meets the team! Yay!**

 **You guys probably weren't expecting me to make Persephone to be like a nice mom to him eh? By the way, in my story she looks like Rosario Dawson. Hades will look like James Franco.**

 **About the pairing...I really have no idea about that. Could you guys please give votes? And no guys! While Nico is bi here and I have nothing against homos, I want to pair him with a girl and I'm uncomfortable writing a story with the main character having a gay relationship! I'll pair him with the girl who has most votes in the reviews!**

 **Litestryke out!**


	3. 2 Dropzone(or: First mission blows)

**Yo! Sorry for the delay! Forgot to tell ya my finals came up! Now I'm waiting for the results that'll decide whether I enter 12th grade or fail. But enough of my sob life story! Let's get back to the chapter you've all been waiting for desperately.**

 **Also, I'm going to ignore like 40-50% of the comics since I haven't read any of them.**

Nico- normal third person POV/narrative, etc

'Nico'- 1st person speech/dialogue/automated-AI-voice speaking

" **Nico'-** unnatural/supernatural/demonic/loud/intense sound/important author's note(they'll pop up a lot in the middle of the chapters from now o)

" _nico"-_ thoughts/stressing on certain words

 **Chapter 3**

 **Dropzone(Alt. Title- First mission always blows)**

 **Mount justice, Happy harbour, Rhode island, June 22:**

'Recognized-Ghost king' said the cave's automated security system in it's near emotionless, mechanical voice as Nico came out of the zeta tube.

With a slight stumble Robin had come to recognize every time seemed to suddenly have on using a zeta beam.

" Sorry I'm late! My dog for some reason decided it's a good idea to start up a catfight-or is it a dogfight since it involved dogs?- with a 3-headed attack/guard dog in hell who is clearly 5 times bigger than her." said Nico with a straight face, clad...in normal civilian clothing. Which was predominantly...pink?

…

…

…

...(HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! U guys seriously thought I'd make Nico dress up in PINK?! He wouldn't be caught dead(get it? Cause he's the son of death god?) in pink even if the fate of reality itself depended on it!)

Black shoes, black pants, grey shirt with a mcdonalds logo on it(in black) and his trademark full sleeved black leather jacket that seems a little too small/tight for him. Yup. He's the same guy all right.

...Though his possibly untrue excuse for being late by 1 minute was a clue enough that he was fine since it still gained a collective groan from Robin, Kidflash and Aqualad(they honestly didn't understand why she came late every time and offered excuses that were exceedingly lame or downright...in this case it was the latter type), with Megan sporting a surprised expression on her face on the fact that Nico had a pet dog and Superboy...well he didn't show any outward change in his facial expression except for raising one of his eyebrows in slight curiosity.

"You have a dog?" asked Megan in a curious tone.

"um, yeah. Didn't I tell you that before we boraded your bioship for the first time the day we that Twister bot?" asked Nico

"Um no. You've never mentioned anything about having a dog. Cause if y, we would have remembered it" said Kidflash in a skeptical tone, the thought of his fellow team member being possibly insane once again taking up space in his mind.

"Huh. Must've confused it for some other time. Eh, who cares? We got a mission to do!"said Nico

"Right" said Robin as the teens turned their attention back to Batman.

Insert here the exact scene from the canon episode(cause I'm not going to insert here what you guys can already imagine using your few brain cells) right up Robin asks who's the team leader.

"That's your job" said Batman after a heartbeat.

Quirking an eyebrow but saying nothing, Nico joined the rest of the team to head to their rooms to collect their gear.

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Closing the door behind him, Nico approached his bed. Lying down, stomach on the floor and reaching his hand underneath the bed, Nico waited, narrowing his eyes at the expanse of concrete ground under the bed and around his outstretched hand.

After about 4-5 seconds of just staying in that position, the shadow underneath the bed seemed to be shifting and rippling like some sort of lake that was disturbed. Suddenly, a duffel bag practically jumped out of it, right into nico's expectant hand.

Pulling it out and now standing on his 2 feet, Nico dropped the bag on the bed, making a muffled 'clank' that one could hear if they strained their ears to do so.

Now in bright light, the bag was bare for all to see. It was a first gear torrent waterproof duffel bag( you can see on google images to see what it looks like) which was predominantly light grey while being black on the underside. It didn't seem very big and looked to be filled with either nothing or maybe just something very small.

Zipping it open, Nico reached into the inky blackness of the bag's interior(even though it was quite bright outside). Shuffling around a bit as if he couldn't find what he was looking for, he finally let out a triumphant "aha!" when he pulled out a full-sleeved hooded black cloak. Said cloak was the exact same one the team had first seen him in. Setting it aside, he pulled out 2 berettas that were so pitch black they seemed to give off a foreboding aura, as if warning anyone to keep their distance.

"In _a way, they should"_ thought Nico as he put them atop the cloak after attaching some silencers to their nozzles.

He then took out a full black bodysuit with what looked like 2 torso holsters attached to the torso portion's side, one on each side. Aside from that, it had no other distinguishing mark on it. This was Leo's custom made bodysuit, completely fireproof, bulletproof, knifeproof(the tip may pierce with right force) or in Leo's words, 'everything-proof'. Leo had wanted to originally put some stupid design on it. Thankfully caypso was able to talk him out of it on seeing Nico's twitchy left eye twitching.

He then took out 4 large celestial bronze lined cylinders, each about as long as his forearm and holding 5 incendiary grenades each. Both container and bomb being custom made by Leo himself.

Each grenade was magically enchanted by Leo's girlfriend Calypso(no! Not that weirdo from pirates of the caribbean at all! The ogygian!) so they could obey Nico's will to detonate however long he wished after pressing a small button to activate them. Each grenade had explosive power equal to 3 frag grenades.

Gently putting the cylinders on a table next to the bed, Nico then pulled out 2 small laser sight scopes and attached them to his berettas before hurriedly reaching in and taking out 4 magazines. These mags housed rubber bullets, meant for self defence. Nico often didn't use them since he didn't often need someone alive for information(considering he could just kill them, then command their soul to tell him as they powerlessly obey him...though that would take quite a while since it could be hours, days, even years before their fate is decided)

Add in the fact that the league had a strict 'no killing' rule and some of the team members were green(KF, MM...a little literal for her don't ya think?) and this might cause the already violent superboy to start using his strength more freely(since he could see it as permission to kill), he had to start using more incapacitation methods than just quick,draw and fire.

With calypso's help, he was able to make these bullets completely non-lethal since while ordinary rubber bullets were originally designed to be non-lethal, with the correct velocity, design, angle of shooting, and the place where it penetrates, it could still kill. So, calypso basically enchanted them to pierce inorganic materials like concrete like normal rubber bullets, but against normal human(or metahuman...or even supernatural, alien or normal animals) they just get embedded into the skin.

Though they did warn him to avoid headshots or neckshots if he doesn't want them dead.

Taking a step back, Nico set to gearing up.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 **Santa prisca, caribbean sea,June 22, 20:08:**

The team was on the bioship heading towards santa prisca. Miss martian was at the pilot seat in the centre, piloting the ship while the rest of the team were scattered around seated.

Nico was decked out in his usual apparel. Black hooded cloak enchanted to allow only as much light in as he wished.

He was busy checking his pockets for the 5th time to make sure he wasn't missing anything.

2 silencer attached berettas in 2 torso holsters of the suit? Check. 4 rubber bullet mags? Check. 5 incendiary grenades? Check. Cloak completely obeying and intact? Double check.

Despite this, he still couldn't shake off the feeling that something was gonna come crashing down on them. Given the current state of the team, it was a given that the mission would be ruined. Miss martian is still too green( again literally as well), superboy is like an unstoppable loose cannon, kidflash despite his nerdiness is quite stupid and foolishly arrogant and Robin, who has worked alongside a commanding guy(Batman) had possibly gained an inferiority complex(similar to kidflash which was the main reason for his ego) and would try his best to take the leadership role. The only one who definitely wouldn't screw up would be aqualad, seeing as how calm and collected he was.

"Drop zone A is a go" said miss martian as a hole opened in the floor. Aqualad understood and jumped into the seawater under them before promptly closing without a trace.

As the bioship continued on more inward to the island, Nico cracked his head left and right before standing up at the same time as the others.

As another hole opened up, rope-like structures emerged from the ceiling, 2 descending down to the ground and 4 next to each boy.

Kidflash pressed the cable's end against his suit's belt, instantly turning his bright yellow uniform grey and black.

"Sweet!" exclaimed kidflash as he checked himself.

"Definitely an improvement from that banana peel costume" commented Nico.

"Ha! You're just jealous at my awesomeness" said kidflash in an obnoxious tone before seeing miss martian morph her clothes into a longer cape that nearly touched the floor and full black skintight full bodysuit.

"Nice megalicious" said kf in that disgusting, flirty(atleast his idea of flirty) voice before he immediately turned to the rest. " Hey supey, it aint too late put this on, you know."

"No capes, no tights, no offense" said superboy indifferently.

"It totally works for you" said M'gann in a nearly dreamy voice causing everyone to look at her dubiously. Realizing what she did, she immediately tried to to make it sound like something else. The damage was done though.

' _Just what we need. A romantic, hormonal, teenage drama rollercoaster to amplify the tension. I'll be surprised if this mission turns up a success._ ' thought Nico before hurriedly sliding down the cable and landing noiselessly.

He was followed by Robin while miss martian floated down using her TK.

They immediatley leaped awy to void going 'SPLAT" under superboy's feet which caused a slight tremor.

"Hmph. Knew I didn't need a cable." said superboy arrogantly.

"And yet craeting a seismic event will not exactly help with the covert part of the mission." said Robin in a hushed and and scolding tone.

"Agreed. We need to get in and out as fast as possible without leaving any trace of our presence. So let's at least try to be as quiet as possible" said Nico.

After contacting aqualad and updating him of their position, he ordered them to rendezvous at the factory.

Heading through the forest at a steady pace, Nico stayed alert for any danger, keeping an eye out for any threat In the immediate vicinity. Finding none, he closed his eyes for a split second and opened to reveal his eyes now having a strange color. His sclera was pitch black now while his irirses and pupils were blood red.

This was what Nico had called his sensor eyes. These eyes allowed him to 'see' a person's life force or as most people call, the soul. It could show him how long someone had before they die(in the event that they're infected, injured, etc). Recently he also learned how to use it to differentiate between different species/organisms using this power. Every species has a distinct shade of color attributed to their life force. For example, humans have a bright yellow, all metahumans(regardless of their power) were bright blue, most apes a dark violet, etc. It also granted him night vision as well, though everything was tinted red instead. It could also see through the mist and darkness as clear as day.

Obviously he could see ghosts as well. For some reason he even knew how long the ghost has been wandering while using this sight.

Unfortunately, he can't use it in daylight cause then he'd get blind. Kind of like normal night vision goggles.

At the moment, he couldn't see anyone but himself and his team mates. Robin was normal yello, kidflash was spontaneous and bright sky blue, miss martian was a normal white and su perboy...seemed to have both yellow and some green?

' _2 different shades? But-"_

"Did you hear that?" asked Superboy

"Hear what? Wait is this your superhearing kicking in, cause not all of us have it. " stated Kidflash

Megan suddenly called his ears great in that dreamy voice of hers again. Immediately trying to cover up her 2nd mistake, she tried to make it sound something else. Fortunately Nico (unknowingly) saved her.

"I see 'em" he said through narrowed black and red eyes. _'hmm, neither group is approaching the other. Is it-'_

"I see 'em too. Looks like a bunch of armed bozos are having a shootout" said kidflash while his red tinted goggles' frames rotated.

"Wait where's Robin?" said Miss martian only now noticing his absence.

"Nico started looking around until he finally spotted him behind a few trees.

"There he is" he whispered softly before wrapping his cloak around himself and disappearing into oblivion, reappearing at the foot of the tree that robin was behind.

"The hell do you think you're doing?: asked Nico when right behind him.

Out of pure instinct, the young bird-themed boy pivoted on his heel, right fist about to land on the speaker, only to be caught in the gloved hand of the ghost king.

Recognizing his comrade and glad that he hadn't been caught, he released a breath. "Don't give me a heart attack like that man. I'm too young to die. And as you can see, I'm trying to keep up the stealth part of this mission." he said slightly exasperated.

"And you couldn't have told us before disappearing?" he asked, raising an eyebrow with his eyes now returning to normal.

"I thought you'd all follow my lead!" he exclaimed

"Ugh, let's just find them before they end up putting us in a deep shit hole" said Nico as he and Robin started to climb and jump across the trees full assassin's creed style.

Nico, while not showing as much agility and grace as Robin did, was still impressive athletically speaking.

It wasn't long before they came across their team fighting shooters while following the sound of bullets firing.

"Dammit. I blame kidflash" Nico said while staying hidden, before stamping his foot down.

Immediately the ground under the group of people wearing red cloaks with some sort of snake head designs suddenly started shaking, causing quite a few to lose their footing.

" _Showtime"_ he though before pulling out a beretta in his left hand, activating it's laser scope then pulling out a black knife in his right hand.

Jumping onto the nearest goon, Nico shot him in the crotch, pistol-whipped him, then slashed both his arms before swiping his feet from underneath him, causing the bozo to fall. Giving a harsh kick to the downed goon's face, the ghost king was immediately under fire from the fallen idiot's face. Hissing from the pain but still thanking his elf-eared friend for making the suit so it could really stop anything but a well-aimed shot dead, the ghost king immediately wrapped his cloak around him, ducking down before shadow-travelling behind the man at the rear of the group. Rising up from the man's shadow like a ghostly spectre without making a sound, the ghost king immediately thrust his hand forward, making multiple tendrils of darkness come out form under his cloak, wrapping around each and every one of them before they could even fully turn back, then slamming them all against the surrounding trees head first with enough force to knock them out cold, but not enough break their necks and kill them.

He immediately sensed another presence behind. Human, but not Robin. Pulling out his beretta, he turned around just in time to see a thug from the opposing group get electrocuted by none other than aqualad. As Nico stared at Atlantean for a moment, he only said 2 words:

"You're late"

"You're welcome" siad aqualad, a little miffed for not getting thanked for saving him.

Nico soon lost himself in battle, slashing, punching, kicking, shooting, all the while hearing Robin and Kidflash arguing about his disappearance.

It wasn't long before they subdued the entire goon squad and tied them all to the trees.

"I recognize these outfits" said Robin after inspecting one of the red hooded people. "They're the cult of kobra, acriminal organization led by kobra"

"I am sure that if Batman knew this group of extremists were on the island he would have told us" said Aqualad.

"Which means Cobras' taken over the island" said Nico in realization

"Great, now we contact the league. Mission accomplished." said kidflash'

"No way, cobra is hoarding the venom, not selling it. We don't leave until I find out why." said Robin with some gusto.

"Until you find out why?" challenged kf

"The team needs a leader." said Robin

"And it's supposed to be you? Pfft. You're a 13 year old kid who bailed on us" said kidflash

"And you're a mature 15 year old? You blew our cover the first chance we got!" exclaimed Robin with slight anger.

-click-

"Who do you think you are? Batman?!" challenged kidflash angrily.

"No, but I'm the closest thing to batman there is here!" replied Robin with fury.

"Precisely-" BANG.

Silence. Then, as one, everyone turned to the prince of the underworld, gun in hand, nozzle smoking and pointing down on the ground near Robin and kidflash's feet and giving off a menacing vibe that would send lesser men into a pissing-in-my-pants-as-much-as-possible contest. Miss martian's legs were quaking, kidflash was shivering as if he was in the arctic, while the others were extremely tense,

"If you're done with your pissing contest, I believe we should figure out what to do right now" said Nico in a 'Do-not-cross-me' voice.

"hehehehehe, such clever _ninos"_ said a voice with with a thick accent, possibly spanish.

They all turned to the guy wearing the el luchador mask, wearing an expression that put Nico on guard. "but if you want to find out what is going on, I can take you inside" said Bane

 _'yeah I don't trust this guy one bit.'_ thought Nico as he saw Miss martian kneel right in front of Bane's face, holding a hand to the side of her head and her eyes glowing green.

"uh uh chica. No entering bane's mind" Bane said stile grinning creepily.

After a few moments, Miss martian shook her head. "There's a secret entrance alright. But he's constantly reciting football scores en espanol" she said in a frustrated tone.

"Can you still extract information from his head even while he's unconscious?'" asked Nico having an idea.

"Yeah. It's actually quite easy." stated Miss Martian

"Good" was all he said before striking Bane's neck then his forehead quickly. The effect was instant. Bane's head lolled forward with a tiny bit of drool streaming out from the corner of his mouth.

"You may proceed" he said calmly.

"How did you know that would work?" asked aqualad curiously, since he hadn't thought of the possibility of telepaths extracting information from an unconscious person's mind.

"I didn't. That's why I asked her first. Even if she couldn't, I still would've done the same. He's not exactly trying to hide the fact that he's got evil plan to end us all while still getting what he wants."

"Done" Miss martian said after roughly half a minute, getting up then walking off onto a certain direction in the forest. "This way guys" she called.

After a while, they finally arrived at a cliffside, giving a clear view of the factory.

Taking out his binoculars, Robin observed the hordes of venom crates just lying around while cobra cultists milled around, either carrying guns or more venom crates.

"Look at all that product" exclaimed Robin "But if he's not selling to the usual suspects" he continued

"We need to find the buyer" said both Ghost king and Aqualad at the same time, causing the two to look at each other for a moment.

"Just what _I_ was thinking" said kidflash seriously.

"Yeah.. you're the thinker" said robin with a smirk

"dude, sarcasm? A real leader would try to find answers" said kidflash as he tried to lessen his embaressment

Everyone turned towards miss martian as they heard a large grinding sound. Seeing a large boulder being moved out of the way as she moved her right hand to the side revealed their secret entrance.

"Well, answers are this way" said miss martian with a little pride.

"Well, I wouldn't mind megalious being our leader though" said kidflash, again with that ridiculous flirty voice.

As they entered the tunnel, Nico let out a whistle. " Now _this_ seems like my kind of place" Nico said with a hidden smirk on seeing the blazing torches providing light in the tunnel's darkness.

"Of course it would for you mister gloom 'n doom" said robin with a smirk.

If anyone else seemed a little weirded out by the resident brooder's statement, they didn't show it.

Finally they stood in front of a metal door with some sort of blue square pad next to it's handle.

"I think I could hack-" robin was interrupted by superboy kicking the door open with such a force it practically flew a few feet before finally falling to the ground with large 'CLANG'.

"What did we say earlier about stealth superboy?" Nico asked, frustation clear as day in his tone.

Superboy just scoffed and headed forward, not in the least caring what the ghost king said.

"Come on, we must- where's robin?" asked aqualad on noting robin's absence

"I'll get the info before boy wonder even gets back" said kidflash speeding before anyone could stop him.

"kid, wait!'" aqualad yelled, too late.

"Don't worry, I can see where they are. I'll immediately shadow-travel to their position if they need help" Nico said, not having to explain how he could do so since he already explained to aqualad about the nature of his powers as per his request. Though he left much out like how he got them and told aqualad he might everyone later on in the future.

Nodding in understanding, the group of 4 walked ahead before finally coming to where they had seen earlier from near the secret entrance.

As they watched from a balcony, nico then noticed something " Hey" he said, drawing the others' attention "they aren't horading any of the old venom crates"

"maybe freshness counts?" suggested miss martian unsurely

"Can't be sure without checking out" nico replied

"I hear a helicopter coming" said superboy, having heard it thanks his superhearing

"That must be the buyer, aqualad stated. "Miss martian, link us up and find out who the buyer is" he said

"Understood" replied MM

Pretty soon, nico could feel a presence in his mind. Having tangled with mind-reading beings beofre, Nico knew when he was in telepathic contact with another.

" _I'm here_ " he thought to let everyone know he's also in the mental link as he saw miss martian vanish. However his sensor eyes could still see her life sign as she glided through the air towards where kobra was going to meet the buyer.

" _Guys, I see the buyer_ " miss martian mentally told them before sending a mental image of said person.

Immediately, nico and aqualad widened their eyes " _sportsmaster!"_

" _I'd recognize that sports loving, jason voorhees wannabe anywhere!"_ nico said mentally, remembering when he nearly got his head knocked off by the maniac's belt.

" _I believe now I should call the league" thought_ aqualad who tried to contact red tornado with his commlink, but only meeting static.

" _must be some sorta jammer"_ nico guessed

However, it appeared that despite bane's absence, something just had to go wrong.

In this case, it was some random kobra grunt near his leader taking out a lighter to smoke a cigar.

Unfortunately, miss martian by proxy was nearby and on seeing the lighter's fire, let out a slight yelp

"eep!"

"Huh" "The hell was that?" "Did you hear that?" were some of the mutterings and questions the kobra cultists made, wondering where sudden shrill, girly sound came from.

Some looked towards shimmer, the only female in the entire area, then immediately dismissed it since 1. she just looked too punk-ish too ever let out a girly scream despite her sex and 2. she's shimmer.

However, 2 kobra cultists who were near the space where miss martian was just floating above ground noticed the slight haze in the air. "Hey" thug#1 said "do you see-"he was suddenly pushed back by some invisible force. Thug#2 tried to aim at her, but was met with the same fate before he could even squeeze his rifle's trigger.

Having panicked at blowing her cover, miss martian deactivated her camo unconsciously and started throwing all the goons around like dolls.

"aw shit" growled nico before vaulting over the balcony's rails and landing on a high stack of crates that broke his fall. Pulling out his berettas from the torso holsters of his bodysuit, he opened fire on everyone in sight. Silencers were off since there was no point in keeping them. They'd only hamper things since they decreased the firing rate of his berettas by a large factor. He didn't pay attention to superboy and aqualad joining in, just focusing on the enemy.

At the catwalks, the ground, behind the crates, no one was safe from the ghost king's rain of bullets as he shot everywhere but their heads. He even got a few lucky kidney shots and some even in their asses. Jumping down from his vantage point once someone got a lucky shot at his bullet proof suit, he took cover behind a crate from which he started shooting at everyone. He suddenly saw a greyish blur knock a few thugs out. The blur slowed down and stopped to reveal kidflash.

Sensing robin nearby as well, he then wrapped his cloak around himself, descended into his shadow, and reappeared at a crate much closer to sportsmaster and kobra.

Nico was just about to take out an incendiary grenade when kobra suddenly got distracted by robin, promptly ordering shimmer to deal with him. Nico immediately opened fire on sportsmaster. The bastard's bullet proof armor stopped all his bullets dead, mainly because of their design to be as non-lethal as possible. Not that actual lead, or even his persoanl favourite stygian iron-silver alloy lethal bullets would have a much better effect against that armor since it could stop even high calibre shots from a minigun and practically tank anything short of a grenade.

-click-click-

Shit. Out of ammo. Oh great. Sportsmaster was now aiming some sort of high tech laser scope attached crossbow at him. Descending into his shadow as soon as the first bolt was fired, he reappeared in a swirl of darkness behind the same crate he'd originally shadow-travelled from.

" _we must retreat! Kid, clear a path!"_ nico suddenly heard in aqualad's voice in his mind.

" _On it"_ kid flash replied after blitzing through some cultists towards another cave entrance.

As nico got to his feet, he activated 2 incendiary grenades and threw them to the side while still shooting behind with one beretta without even looking behind.

Once everyone was through, with superboy at the rear, aqualad immediately told him to destroy the support beams which he promptly did. This immediately caused the ceiling to collapse behind them, effectively blocking the cultists off.

"well" said Nico after panting slightly "that went well" sarcastically.

"How could this happen? How could my first mission as team leader fail?" robin questioned himself angrily and punching the wall in frustration

"It is because you have the most experience, now working as a weakness here." aqualad said in a calm tone, as he walked towards his friend. "When with batman, your roles are defined and there is no need for you to speak. But this team, it is new, inexperienced. It's leader needs to be vocal and clearly give orders."

"So what am I supposed to do? Hold everyone's hands and play babysitter?!" said robin angrily.

"No" immediately replied Nico before continuing "you don't. What you need to know is the best course of action for the team. A leader doesn't just do his thing while expecting the rest of those under his command to know what he or she wills and carry it out. A leader acts as the command centre of a team, the person who knows the strengths and weaknesses of each and every member, the person who's willing to support the brunt of the entire team's failure and dish out judgement on those team members who've accordingly, who's patient and unbiased. If we just selected the most powerful person as the leader, then by that criteria superboy would've been our leader, or even miss martian for that matter." revealed Nico with a tone of wisdom.

As the prince of the underworld, Nico had full-fledged access to the lifespan of all dead people in the underworld, regardless of their fate. Meaning he could see all that the deceased people have done/experienced before dying. He often analyzed the deaths of politicians, soldiers and assassins to find more and more methods of killing someone, human or monster and more ways to better avoid death, specially the embarressiong ones that were purely accidental.

Often times, a flimsy chain of command of various military squadrons got many platoos killed. Sometimes, a soldier who was unfit to be a leader and simply ahd that position thanks to rank made a wrong choice and ended up dead.

There were many, many more ways were soldiers died thanks to a wrong leader. He could spend a whole day listing every method.

"That was pretty deep for-"-cough-cough-

Immediately, robin looked down. "you're right" he said softly "who am I kidding? You should be our leader kaldur. You're the only one who can"

"Please I can run circles.."

BANG.

Silence again. Everyone turned to Nico and saw his hand holding a gun beside his hip, pointing upwards.

However, Wally was still. Immediately, right in front of his wide eyes, a few strands of what looked like his red hair soundlessly fell down to the ground. He reached his hand up, ruffling the side of his head and finally felt some some strands that seemed to be cut off.

"Kidflash...seriously, please don't make me start calling you kid dumbass" said nico in a serious tone before continueing "or you'll find out w **hat happens to a speedster when he runs around in the dark** " his voice now sounding slightly demonic.

Putting th beretta back into his holster, he asked "what?" on seeing everyone's expression.

"'sides, he's the ideal leader."

"I could have told you that" superboy said nodding

"Hello megan! It's so obvious!"

"Fine" kid relented finally, though with a smirk that immediately vanished when he rounded on Ghost king "But did you seriously have to shoot me to get your point across? You could have killed me!"

"Oh please! That bullet only grazed your hair. Besides, if I wanted to kill you, I would have it in style."

"...you're kidding, right?"

"Do I _look_ like someone who would joke about killing someone?"

"..."

"..."

"..."

Que aqualad's canon reply and their goal.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

As they walked down the cave, robin was struck with a thought and expressed it.

"Sportsmaster is the buyer/supplier. But it still doesn't add up. He doesn't have the juice to get the blockbuster formula or get kobra to do his dirty work for him."

"And neither have the chops to bond blockbuster with venom" said kidflash. "That took some major nerdage" he stated.

"wait" spoke up nico "someone's at the end of the tunnel" sensing a human sign but slightly...off

Immediately. Everyone was on guard

"Miss martian, camouflage yourself and see who it is" said aqualad

"understood" was all she said before vanishing and floating forwards again.

"And for the love of the gods, please don't screw up this time" whispered nico as he took out a beretta and and a black knife.

"sorry" she said, a bit ashamed

After a while..." _guys, it's bane"._

" _what? How? Didn't gk knock him out cold?" wondered k_ idflash

" _he must've regained consciousness some time after we left and then used his superstrength to break the ropes"_ nico thought back.

" _guys, there's more. Bane's lined the entire cave mouth with explosives that'll detonate with enough force to bring down the ceiling, effectively blocking our exit. He''ll do it as soon as we're in position using a remote detonator in his hands"_ miss martian relayed to them.

" _man, talk about a grudge"_ thought nico _"soo, what now?"_

Aqualad's eyes narrowed, a sign nico had come to deduce as the only indication of him thinking hard

" _kidflash, grab the remote from his hand before he can notice. Miss martian lift him up into the air so so superboy can knock him unconscious"_ thought aqualad

" _got it, fearless leader"_ followed by speeding off

" _superboy..."_ said aqualad as he turned to him

Nodding to acknowledge, superboy immediately sped off, leaving foot-sized half-inch thick craters and slight tremors with each step.

" _Hey robin, does bane's body have a permanent trace of venom"_ mentally questioned nico

" _yeah. Why?"_

" _that explains it. Due to the permanent bit of venom in his body, he must be different genetically speaking now. That's why he seemed a little off-human"_ replied nico.

As they all came out, they remet with superboy, miss martian and kidflash and saw bane lying on the floor, mouth drooling like a god damn waterfall.

"Guys, the helicopter's taking off" said superboy

"Kid, ghost, stall them" ordered aqualad

"On it" "got it" were the respective replies of the ghost king and the teen speedster as kidflash sped away while nico dropped and vanished into his shadow.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

At the site of the dealing, chaos immediately settled when goons all over were tackled by some grey blur while others were being shot at or being attacked/whipped by various whips/tentacles that looked to made of pure darkness, which made sense since they were coming from everyone's very shadows.

It wasn't long until until the other team members came down and joined in the fight. Superboy proceeded to tpunch the chopper after distracting mammoth to allow aqualad to electrocute him easily, but was immediately shot down by sportsmaster's plasma cannon.

Nico then looked to the side and saw robin get thrown back by kobra. Aiming a beretta at himright at his crotch, nico squeezed, while kobra looked down, having noticed the red laser dot on him.

-click-click-

 _'shit, both are out"_

He immediately proceeded to reach into his pockets and found only one cartridge after rummaging all of them extensively.

He was just about to insert the new cartridge into his right beretta, when suddenly he was bombarded by bullets from the front, forcing him back.

Looking up, the ghost king saw a sidearm in kobra's arm, which stopped spitting bullets once he looked up.

"I doubt you are faster than a bullet. So I suggest you back away" said kobra snidely

"Fat chance, Mr. hardcore baldy whiteman" replied nico while berating himself for being so callous as to take his eyes of the enemy who was right in front of him and who could've attacked him in various wa-

-BOOM-

A massive explosion blew him away from kobra. Fuck! What's with him today?! He wasn't usually so mindless of his surroundings. He often kept an eye on all potential threats using his sensory vision so he couldn't be ambushed or caught surprised while also straining his ears to hear anything and everything.

He tried to get up, and just stood up in time to see kobra rush off into the forests.

"Dude you okay? I saw some bozo holding a grenade launcher aim at you. Good thing I tackled him. Still the grenade flew and blew right in front of ya. Sorry man" said kidflash sheepishly as he helped nico up with one hand while rubbing his head sheepishly.

"It's alright. My suit took most of the damage anyway." he said

An explosion drew their attention skyward, only to see the chopper get blown up.

Smirking in satisfaction, hands on his hips, mico said in his (in his personal opinion, his best) worst Liam Neeson voice: "I _love_ it when a plan comes together".

Kidflash gave him a deadpanned expressionand said with an equally deadpanned voice "Seriously, that doesn't even sound remotely like Liam Neeson"

"What, I tried"

As everyone met near the landing pad, robin said "we picked the right guy to lead. Which makes you the perfect guy to explain this to batman". The smile on aqualad's face was replaced by his downcast expression

"There there, kaldur. We're here for you" said nico with a false comforting tone while patting him on the shoulder.

 **Mount justice, 10:01, July 22**

"A simple recon mission. Observe and report" lectured batman, getting in kaldur's face.

Recieving their first debriefing at mount justice in the form of batman berating them was not a fun experience. While most like kaldur wore a sad and grim expression, robin looked extremely pale.

" _Probably cause batman will personally make him pay hell later on, seeing as he's his protege"_ thought nico grimly.

Man, it's just like when he disappoints mom and dad. Dad was pretty harsh with words and often dished out punishment in the form of trying to outrun cerberus while depowered. Not fun at all. It took a lot to piss off mom though, but fates help him when she does. For when she's punishing him, he'd rather face off against one of gaia's giant anti-god spawns with nothing but a pop gun.

"Until then, good job" his head snapped up so fast he swore he could feel whiplash. Was he hearing things now or was _batman_ complimenting them? Especially after he was detailing their mistakes?

"No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy." yup. His mind is now going in a complete 180 direction now. "How you adjust to the unforeseen determines your success. How you decide who leads, determines character" his ]voice still solid even as he walked away.

Smiling slightly, he was just about to suggest to the team a good idea of how to celebrate their first mission.

"Ghost king" turning around he saw batman looking straight at him, "try and lay off friendly fire" he said

"I'll try. But no promises" he replied in his most serious tone, concentrating on not letting himself smile as Batman looked at him for a second before turning around and walking away.

"So, who's up for a happy meal?"

 **So, obviously I've skipped ep3-"Welcome to happy harbor" but that's mainly cause after finishing this story I will make a twoshot story revolving around that episode.**

 **You have seen how I've just skipped certain dialogues, lines, scenes, etc saying they're just unchanged canon scenes. That's mainly cause I wanted to get this chapter done as soon as possible. There will be times where I will type every canon scene down to the last letter and there will be times where I just skip them saying they're just the same unchanged ones.**

 **This also, obviously ignores Rick Riordan's recent 'trials of apollo' series.**

 **Also, I'm straight. That means I WILL pair nico up with a girl. So, sorry people who wanted to see Nico pair up with a guy, but i've already made up my mind. And that too about which girl. I guarentee you this will be someone you would never expect to be coupled with Nico.**

 **Also, I want to give Nico an actual rogues gallery like every other superhero, which should also be independent of wonder woman's by the way. But if you want anyone of wonder woman's rogues to be in his, you are welcomed to suggest, and I'll see what I can do.**

 **Also, a bit on Nico's personality:- it's a mix of his canon emoness/deject manner and the lazy laid back attitude of kakashi hatake from naruto, the awesome manga/anime series.**

 **Stay tuned for more, true believers, and keep an eye out for a special guest appearance of a famous dc character (who will be in nico's rougue gallery) in the not so distant future.**

 **Litestryke out!**


	4. 3 Undead hunter(Part 1:Revisiting)

… **you know what? I'm ignoring the comics completely now! I just realised that in various YJ fics when a 6th member was added, no author ever wrote anything related to the comics! I've read various types of naruto and yj crossover fics, and none of them have any yj comics related stuff!(except maybe artemis's involvement in 'schooled' sometimes but that's it!)**

 **So, now I'm only going to follow the show. By the way, I just wanted everyone to know that Nico will be paired with a _dc_ character, not from pjo-hoo! **

**I'm also very, very, very, very x 1000 times sorry about the long wait but 12th grade is killing me!**

 **Also, Nico's very first rogue gets mentioned in this chapter(no, not my oc Andrew, he's the 2nd actually) who's kind of a shared villain with batman...and perhaps superman to some extent.**

 **Guest-starring a special minor character shown in the PJO-HOO series:(spoilers if I tell you his name)**

"nico"-normal speech/dialogue

nico-3rd person POV/no POV

 _nico, "nico"-_ thoughts/whispers/emphasizing or stressing specific words

" **nico"-** powerful/demonic voice

 **Anyway, on with the story!**

 **Chapter 3**

 **Undead's Hunter (Part 1: Reminiscing)**

 **(Or: Welcome back)**

 **Gotham academy, Gotham city, August 3, 22:07:**

In the dead of night, if one were to look at the pristine, highly reputed Gotham academy from the outside, barring some broken windows, one would think nothing was wrong, it's just another ordinary night in Gotham and some punks had broken to probably vandalize the place for whichever reasons, personal in a student;s case or whatever. Not their problem. They didn;t want to go looking for trouble. That was Batman and his sidekick's job anyway.

Inside, however, was a different story.

One of the corridors that was lined with lockers was completely trashed, the destruction led to the school gym area, where a strange sight would greet any outsider. The windows above the gym's benches were broken, as if something big was thrown through it.

That something was a darkly dressed figure, seemingly writhing in slight pain from roughly landing on his left side. His left shoulder was aching the most, but otherwise he could get up. As he slowly got up to see his friends look at him in surprise, he just had enough time to widen his eyes in slight fear and turn around just in time to see the wall behind him get smashed through, with a large, bulky figure blocking what little moonlight could seep into the dark gym.

" **RAAAAAARRRGH" bellowed** the humanoid goliath, it's eyes, filled with nothing but clear madness,rage and base instincts comparable to a rabid dog gazed right at him.

" _How the hell did things go to hell so fast? I just wanted_ one _quiet,peaceful day to just laze around and do my own thing"_ thought dark figure tiredly, for he was slightly exhausted thanks to the giant.

As he prepared to face the monstrous beast, he suddenly spotted the strange-looking extremely muscular person nearby, just looking at him with completely red eyes. His own eyes flashing black and red, he suddenly groaned. Great, no life nor ghost sign. Then that means it's a freakin' robot! Just his luck!

Seriously, it's like he was in some sort of twisted shitty story written out by some sadistic idiot!

His mind soon wandered to when this all started, which was just 2 days ago...

 **Camp half-blood, Long island, August 1, 2:30 pm:**

Nico didn't know why he was here. Oh wait, now he remembers. Hazel had IM-ed(Iris-messaged) him, asking to see if he would join in for capture the flag this friday, which was just this very week. Initially, he wanted to say no, reason being that immediately he could be called on by the league for some sort of mission the team would be needed for. In reality that was just a cover. He actually wanted to avoid coming in contact with the populace of both demigod camps. Despite the fact that he'd come a long way from the fearful, skinny kid he used to be in another life, he still tried to keep away from the camps' grounds. Even though both camps didn't treat nico like the plague like they used to, even after the 2nd titan war (to a lesser degree after that), he still just...felt like someone was there amongst them who remembered the sickly brooder who was so withdrawn and shrivelled up, preferring the dead and treating the people of the _afterlife_ as if they're still alive while keeping his distance from all manners of living beings.

It also didn't help that the familiar faces of every single demigod always reminded him of a past life. Of simpler times. Times when he wasn't alone. When he was just in his own little world, talking to imaginary folks and playing with his little mythomagic cards or constantly blabbing at his sister.

The slight smile he had immediately turned into a frown when he remembered when the simple life, the innocence, his naivety was just snatched away from him. When he felt truly alone. When he felt truly betrayed. Used.

Betrayal. Hatred. Loneliness.

The only emotions he would feel for years, not knowing who to trust, who to turn to, what to do. He was truly alone. And while once in a blue moon someone tried to help, he'd just shut them out, fearing the possibility of repeating a stunt like Jackson's or Minos's again.

All this, just festering in his dark heart.

Until _that_ day.

When he was saved.

When he was shown something beautiful.

When _she_ came and revealed to him a life similar to his, showing him the power he truly has, what he could do with it, _what he could make of his life._

Shaking his head to rid himself of these thoughts, he immediately looked at Hazel and regretted it.

She was giving him the look. The infamous puppy dog look that could melt the antarctic even in winter times. The look that even his father found to be irresistable.

He was saved by his phone ringing. Telling Hazel to wait a moment, he saw the caller while staying out of the IM's site. Eyes narrowed at the caller's name, he took the call.

What the person told him was something that made him say "yes" to Haze immediately in an indifferent tone while trying to hide the grim smile that threatened to break out on his face.

He was coming to CHB under the guise of taking part in the next capture the flag game, but really he was here to meet with a certain son of Hecate.

And a former soldier of Kronos.

All the while trying to think up a way to avoid meeting with kelp-for-brains and the rest of the 7.

 **Thalia's tree, CHB borders, 3:00:**

Alabaster C, Torrington was tapping his right foot as he gazed out at the expanse of grasslands and the road more specifically while he leaned with his back against the tree bark face wearing a grim expression.

Al was waiting for his best friend and fellow camp outcast Nico di Angelo show up. Ever since they both had a less than friendly meeting 1 and a half years ago (which culminated in a fight between them, which destroyed nearly half of downtown Los Angeles, which got a huge number of monsters attacking them both, which in turn got _wonder woman, lady Artemis and her little anti-amle club_ involved somehow), Nico was able to knock some sense into him, showing how alike they are and helping him cope with the overall situation regarding the asshole rulers called olympian 'Gods'.

And becoming one of the campers here for the sake of his siblings as Nico told him, for they need him more than anyone to cope with their powers.

He truly owed the prince of Greek hell for making him realise the importance of family and setting his priorities straight.

And for picking him of the path of vengeance that would undoubtedly would lead him to his own demise as nico told him everytime they met.

He'd always believed that there was no one else like him. No one as pained and lonesome as him. He'd thought that he could relate with people like Luke, but then he saw what a backstabbing swine he truly was. Ironic, really that he ultimately died a hero.

As they traded their sob stories, they were both shocked to find that they had something else in common: love for Mythomagic. Even though both saw it as childish and a waste of their time, they somehow ended up having mythomagic battles, taking part in mythomagic tournaments, exchanging strategies(in regards to both fighting or mythomagic strageies) and recent experiences. Though they couldn't meet as often as they'd like, what with the 'solo' quests that they were often given by many gods recently.

Recently though, he can't help but start getting worried about nico. He's started associating (for lack of a better word) with the mortal world, but most disturbingly, with the criminals and 'supervillains' and 'superheroes'. Al didn't know why he was worrying though since nico could handle himself fine! He was plenty powerful, even more than that seaspawn or those grace siblings could ever be, even combined!

…

Ok, he may be exaggerating, but it has some truth!

Everyone at camp knew of their friendship, and often talked about it behind their backs. Probably saying things like 'losers and outcasts always stick together'. Thank his mother no one but few including him know about nico's bisexuality! Otherwise everyone would see him as even more of a freak and probably think they're in a relationship! Not that either of them would care. They'd started distancing themselves from them.

Often times, they both worked as a tag team of sorts to carry out a mission of quest, whether some deity requests it or they do it of their own accord.

Though, there would be one that they would do for years to come, once every year.

All thanks to another one of his foolish half siblings.

The frown his face now sported deepened even further on remembering exactly why he'd called his friend to meet him here of all places.

Man was gonna be pissed once he tells him...

A hand landed on his shoulder, eliciting a slight yelp from him before he made to elbow whoever it was in the abdomen, then kick 'em in their nether regions without even turning, a method that nico taught him.

"OW! THE FUCKIN' HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?!" bellowed a familiar voice from behind in obvious pain.

Eyes widening, he turned around to find the very person he had been waiting for nearly 20 minutes, hunched over in pain and clutching his crotch, his face twisted in agony.

"The hell dude?! You don't just jump people from behind! Seriously!" Al exclaimed indignantly.

"Dammit! Sorry, it's a force of habit I'm trying to erase." replied nico apologetically as he stood slightly upright.

Grinning at each other, they suddenly hugged like long-time best friends do.

"It's good to see ya Al"

"You too neeks"

"Sooo, why here? I mean, if it really is what I think it is, camp half-blood is one of the last places where we should be talking about this." said Nico seriously, the atmosphere now turning serious and now both of them squashing any signs of joy and happiness.

"Well, you see, the thing is-" Al was immediately interrupted by a shout of happiness from the base of the hill.

"Nico! You came!" a bronze toned girl said with joy in every word she spoke and her smile reaching her eyes. Her body and face along with her exotic color and curly hair made many men with raging teenage hormones in both camps vy for her attention and many in (camp jupiter mostly) regret having insulted her in the first place. This was Hazel Levesque, daughter of Pluto, half-sister of Nico di angelo.

A slight smile breaking out on his face, Nico welcomed Hazel into his outstretched arms, hugging her tightly.

"Of course I would! Especially since my little sis gave me those adorable ppuppy eyes!" said nico jovially

"Pfft! We both know who's older and you just came 'cause I'm the awesome sister!" she said with some pride

Noting Alabaster's presence, she greeted him with a short 'hi' before dragging her brother away, gripping his hand tightly and blabbering all sorts of stuff that's happened while he was away for the last 2 years.

Giving a helpless look towards his friend Alabaster only raised his hands in a surrender fashion, mouthing 'later' and heading towards the cluster of the cabins.

Nico then tried to pay attention to what Hazel was saying, curious to learn what's happened on the greco-roman side of things while he was away being a part of the human world more closely. Apparently the 2 camps have combined their respective games into a massive new tournament called "War flag", a combination of "Capture the flag" and "War games", which he couldn't learn details about since she was talking faster than Wally did while speed-talking.

Unfortunately since he hadn't been environmentally aware like he has been for the past few weeks mysteriously (hence the reason for why he's been getting more ass-kicking _from_ others than laying it on others), he didn't see where she led him to.

When they finally stopped, Nico found himself in the basement of the Big house, where most of the important meetings took place regarding any important issues, like quests, the Greek-roman alliance, camp activities, etc.

Currently in this room, aside from himself and Hazel, there were many other demigods, both greek and roman. Ever since Gigantomachy II's end from 2 years ago, greeks and romans started trusting each other more, exchanging strategies, stories, customs, etc. and slowly even exchanging campers from time to time. This had helped cover a few problems concerning both camps. Slowly, but gracually, romans started being less strict assholes being all about old traditions and protocol and greeks started formalising and waking up more often to reality. Not to say everyone was happy since there were some within both camps that were in every sense of the word, "Octavian's pets". They would try to exploit every method to break the alliance either because of their own close-mindedness or for their own selfish goals.

Often times, both camps' highest authorities held meetings in either the big house or the roman senate courtroom to discuss their alliance (or discuss the finer points concerning "War flag" according to what Hazel said earlier)

This seemed to be one of those meetings.

As soon as the 2 children of the Underworld's god entered the basement, all sound died down when everybody looked to see who was the new arrival.

Nico suddenly felt very uncomfortable, what with the whole room's attention focusing now on him. He usually didn't like being in the spotlight(though he was a bit of a mama's boy since he enjoyed his time with mom)(it was also why he didn't care anymore that he wasn't as popular as the rest of the 7 and Reyna...small as his contributions were), he liked sticking to darkness, where he felt safe, where he wouldn't have to worry about someone discovering him and his secrets.

Add in the fact that the room was filled to the brim with people whom he _really_ didn't want to meet as his eyes swept over all those who were there, recognizing many people either as those he's seen a few times during his few months in both camps or those he knew as close friends.

There were various reactions. Some looked like they were seeing a ghost (hehehe...'ghost'. Get it? Cause he's the 'ghost king'?... and i'm gonna just go back to writing now...), some seemed to be pretty happy surprisingly, some just had a neutral face like as if he was just another demigod they've been seeing regularly and not like someone who's been gone for nearly 2 years and only occasionally dropping by, while some who never saw him before didn't recognize him.

"Neeks!" a girl's voice yelled similar to Hazel's tone before Nico was suddenly glomped by a young girl around Nico's height and age, with raven black mid-waist length hair and bright blue eyes.

"Aw, it's soooo great to have you back! Why didn't you tell me were coming back? You know Alabaster and I miss you soooo much! I even tried to find out from zee about where you are but even she doesn't know! And you're both italiens!" said Lou Ellen Gibson, the cabin leader/counsellor of Hecate's cabin and currently the 2nd most powerful demigod daughter of Hecate (the first being Alabaster) hugged Nico as tightly as Hazel had. The reason for reacting similarly to Hazel?

Let's just say it has to do with Nico's and her brother's fight that we mentioned earlier.

Very few were surprised by this action since whenever the son of Hades dropped by, it would usually be with either his sister, her fiance Frank Zhang, or the 2 Hecate siblings( more often than not with the latter)

"sorry Lou. But you know how busy I usually am" said Nico apologetically, slightly embaressed

After both Hazel and Lou greeted each other, the 2 girls were just about to join everyone else when they noticed how Nico was the spotlight.

That immediately ended once Nico said these 7 words:-

"Sorry boys and girls, but I'm already taken" with the most false apologetic tone he could muster.

A lot of people made either grossed out faces or recoiled in surprise, expecting a sassy remark from Nico di angelo the least. Either way, everyone just rolled their eyes and went back to discussing about current war flag rules.

Nico led out a slight, unnoticable groan on seeing some familiar faces approach him who were namely :

Chiron, the centaur who has taught every single hero there is and is the current CHB activities director,

Reyna, the still serving praetor of Camp Jupiter,

And of course, the 7 minus Leo (who had told him he's on a trip to Puerto Rico for some much needed vacation with his girlfriend Calypso) , all of whom were engaged to their respective lovers, if the matching rings each couple wore was anything to go by.

They all looked the same, albeit slightly older. Nico even rubbed his eyes once to make sure he wasn't seeing things when he saw Jason had a slight blonde goatee.

"Dude! Where've ya been man? I mean, no IM's, no visits except for some barely one hour long ones every month, not even coming christmas or thanksgiving!" exclaimed Perseus "percy" Jackson, one of (if not _the)_ most powerful demigods alive, slayer of titans and giants, survivor of tarturus(nico shuddered for a split second on remembering the pit), and multiple titles that could rival the number of those possessed by Will Solace (his first ex)'s dad, Apollo, the sun god.

"Oh give him a break seaweed brain! You know he's so busy having to track down still lingering rogue demigods who could be doing gods know what!" said Annabeth chase, the cunning fiance of Percy. "Excuse my hubby Nico, you know how gets" she said slightly apologetically. "It's great to see you again" she said

The mood slightly darkened on hearing what Annabeth said about 'rogue demigods' aka demigods like Alabaster who still tried to find ways to bring the end of the olympians after Kronos's failed invasion, or those close-minded assholes who didn't like the peace and ironically enough, both the greek and roman members of the latter category joined together to find a way break the alliance. Kronos's former half-blood soldiers were still scattered and were more often than not low-life touble makers now, being thieves, serial killers, drug dealers, assassins, etc using the variety of skills they still had (though most of them were significantly sitting ducks since their godly parents took away their powers that they'd grown dependant on as penance for their crimes and they couldn't exactly use archaic weapons against guns now, could they?) It was the alliance breakers who were the real trouble. Due to having more formal training as the camps granted them with such, they were practically a terrorist organisation that Nico had been trying to hunt down, especially since there were rumors that "bloody Andy" was a member of it before leaving for unknown reasons

Annabeth's comment about Nico dealing with the rogues was a half-lie that he'd told them. While hunting rogues wasn't on his top priority and he didn't come across that many, he'd told them that he had a decade-long 'quest' issued to him by some, but not all, the gods telling him to bring in all rogues, dead or alive, all the while hunting escaped spirits. He didn't tell them anything about having met various other-pantheon beings or his adventures with all the various 'supers' he's had in just 2 years.

When he was trying to get get advice from everyone about whether he should take Batman's offer or not, he'd actually lied to them and told them that Hecate had requested him to join him and Alabster in being a sort of 'mist-monitors' , people who made sure that the Greeks and romans would never be discovered by the world (how the _tartarus_ do they not know that Wonder woman has already revealed that to the the whole world? And what was the amazon thinking anyway?! Atleast she didn't reveal the demigod race...)

"Ah it's ok. It's Percy afterall, everyone knows that. I kinda expected something like this" nico said to lighten the darkened atmosphere

"Hey!" slight laughter was shared amongst everyone

"It's great to see you again" "glad to have you back" "it's good having you back again" etc. were some of the greets he got as he hugged, got shoulder-patted and back-patted by everyone like old friends.

"Please don't tell me you have to leave again" said Piper Mclean, Jason Grace's spouse in a worrying voice, mindful to keep her charmspeaking at bay.

"You gotta thank my sister here for talking me into staying here for atleast a week" he said, lying about why he came. The less people know about what Alabaster called him here for, the better.

"Oh, it was nothing." Hazel said with slight embaressment

"Nothing?" Nico said with a surprised tone, eyes dramatically wide and focused on her, "Nothing? You used your supreme 'cute puppy face' on me"

"Oh come off it!" Hazel said, giggling at his face and description of her 'superpower'

"So, how've things been while I've been gone doing my own stuff?" Nico asked everyone before continuing "and before you say "but didn't Hazel already tell you everything while outside", she was so happy to see me come because of her successful 'puppy face' attack, she talked faster than light could travel. Only thing I understood is that you guys invented a new game called War flag which apparently combines Capture the flag and War games" he said in one breath, making Hazel blush slightly while punching his shoulder

Pretty soon the 7 were joined by 2 people that nico was hoping to not meet. Who were these two you might ask?

Will Solace and Rachel E. Dare

His ex-boyfriend and ex-girl friend respectively.

Nico and Will had tried to make it work. But the problem was all in the timing. The 2nd giant war hadn't even ended a week before they started dating. But, the problem was that Nico was just too emotionally disturbed and still hadn't exited his 'emo phase' as Leo often called it (seeing as how he remebered how much of an anti-social brooder Nico used to be and how much of a smooth and slightly broodish 'badass' he is now). Plus, it seemed that they just didn't have that 'spark' between them that most of Piper's siblings talked of. He had broken things off just 3 weeks into their 'relationship' trying to end it on good terms, so they became sort of friends after that, though they would try to avoid each other just to block out the memories of hands holding and chaste kisses that accompanied their minds whenever seeing each other.

Nico then wandered to the memories about Rachel. By the gods, what he been _thinking_? She was the current oracle's vessel right now! He didn't even understand why eh would do such a thing! What's more is that sometimes when they held hands or locked gazes for too long, her eyes would flash a bright green light before dying down after just a second roughly and then she'd immediately recoil back, as if she'd seen something terrible. She would seem visibly shaken before telling him that she'd seen images involving him, seemingly flashes or warnings of the future and then would paint them using her photographic memory to show him exactly what she saw.

What she described and drew made him pretty shaken up too, cause more often than not, they seemed to show him in some really terrifying forms, whehter he was practically drowning in blood, or looked...inhuman...

Suffice to say, that lasted even shorter than his and Will's time. They were still friends though. It also showed them exactly why the oracle's vessels are never allowed to have a relationship.

Though he did wonder why Apollo, the patron god of prophecies didn't provide any warnings...or maybe he did and they didn't even know it!

Coming back to the present, Nico observed his 2 ex's. Huh. It does seem kinda coincidential that they both came at the same time... they also didn't seem to be any different from when they'd seen each other last, though Will's hair appeared to be longer and nearly reaching below his neckline.

Putting on an award-winning smile, he handshaked with the 2 firmly and made sure to keep things light and non-awkward. They were able to make small talk, exchanging stories about what they do nowadays(some half-lies here and there from nico's side).

The six plus his two ex's then proceeded to tell nico about 'war flag'. Basically, there are 4 forts, each holding a flag within it. All 4 flags are yellow in color, with a red colored symbol to denote which team the flag belongs to. The forts are basically just 4 walls with no roof, enclosing a central cylindrical pillar at the top of which is the flag. The pillars are lined from both inside and outside with various traps to keep enemies from obtaining the flag, especially along it's interior spiral staircase. The walls themselves have various defenses like catapults (which only launch non-lethal things like sleeping powder, stink bombs, mist cloud releasers, etc). If any one of the teams obtains atleast 2 flags from the enemy cohorts, and are able to keep their flags within their forts while making sure the enemy doesn't invade their fort and takes their own flag alongside their claimed/stolen flags for until the game's time limit is up (which is 3 hours), then that cohort wins!

Also, the organisation of the teams is cabinwise, similar to Capture the flag's, only that both roman and greek kids of the 'same' god (eg-both vulcan's and hephaustus's kids) would have to be in the same cohort/team.

 _'hmm, seems pretty simple'_ thought nico as he listened to the rules.

He then learned that they have a voting system from all demigods of both camps to choose which camp should host it and also choose between day or night.

The game itself occurs every 5 months.

"Pretty interesting. So, who's on who's team?" he asked with genuine curiosity

"Umm...well...the thing is..." Percy was speaking slowly with an expression that nico had come to recognize as the 'I'm in deep shit' face that he'd memorized thanks to jackson being in tartarus knows how many such situations.

"Percy, what is it?" asked Nico curiously, for he couldn't think of any reason for which everyone right now was suddenly a little nervous, as if expecting him to get pissed for some reason.

Thank Lou Ellen for often times spitting it out though "the hunters of artemis are coming this time" and that too as if she's talking about the weather, as if the infamous feud between Nico and and the hunters of Artemis was not known by everyone. And when I say everyone, I mean _everyone_.

From the newest demigod who's spent atmost half a month in either camp to probably the residents of Tartarus's deepest, darkest chasms, no one is unaware of the 'war' between the Ghost king and Artemis's maidens.

You all probably have a vague idea suggesting that Nico here has seen and done all sorts of crazy things since the last two years, right? Making enemies and friends and connections of varying natures and origins everywhere, be they 'normal human', of different pantheons, even from outer space!

But, one person(or people, depending on which way you look at it) that nico _should_ regret, but will tell anyone that he doesn't regret making an enemy of is Artemis and her hunters.

How did Nico end up making enemies with the moon goddess and her apostles? Well, he's already having a flashback of the day it all started...so we might as well see it through there...

 _-flashback (roughly 1 and a half years_ ago) _ **-**_

 _ **New Orleans ,October 15th 5:40 pm, 2008:-**_

 _New orleans wasn't exactly what would come to a tourist's mind when visiting USA. Aside from the destruction by hurricane katrina and other such storms alongside some american revolution and civil war artefacts, there wasn't much really._

 _It was, however, a good 'getaway' place for 2 people of 2 different pantheons...who both, not so coincidentially were death related._

 _In an open park where there were enough large trees to create a forest-like area surrounding the wide clearings with 1-inch grass growing around some picnic tables, each aligned with 2 wooden benches_

 _At one such table, an intense battle was going on between 2 people._

 _It was not a battle of fists, nor kicks._

 _Nor swords_

 _Nor knives_

 _Nor guns_

 _Nor grenades_

 _Nor genit-(DAMN YOU INNER PERVERT!)_

 _But, a battle of...mythomagic the card game_

 _Both combatants looked nearly identical, to the point of being possible brothers actually. Both were dressed in dark black clothes, both had slighlty pale and tan skin and black hair with matching black eyes. The only way to tell them apart was by seeing the height difference and certain subtle details, like the cheekbones' shape, the different noselengths, etc._

 _Not to mention the older looking guy always seemed to have an arrogant smirk on his face while the younger one always had an expression of intense concentration._

 _After intensely glaring at every inch of the table and at each card laid out by both of them for about 5 minutes, the younger boy finally groaned and put his face in his hands._

 _The older person's smirk growing even wider, he said in a matching cocky tone with a sort of north english accent mixed with a new yorker's accent, "Well, that makes it 8-3. Better luck next time nicky. I was almost going to tell you to tell you to hurry it up a bit since I actually have some errands to run"_

" _How do you do it? How could you possibly win so many times against me? There's no way you didn't use any tricks. I already checked using my sensor eyes to see any trace of magic clouding but this table's clean, with only some traces from your natural presence. How do you do it Anubis, HOW?!" said our lovable demigod nico di angelo, saying the first half with his face still buried in his hands while speaking the first half with a dejected tone then with a more loud frustrated voice with his face now revealed once again, growling slightly at having lost again to his fellow death-user-and-mythomagic player Anubis, the egyptian god of death and funerals, currently using egyptian magician Walt Stone's body as a host._

" _simple. Experience. Well, off I am. Gotta meet with Sadie. Promised her a good dinner...oh shit."said Anubis, eyes widening in horror on seeing the time on the golden watch on his left wrist. "Damn, damn, damn, damn, damn,damn, DAMN! I really have to go! It was fun beting ya again nick, but if I delay another second Sadie's gonna kill me and Walt! See ya next time" shouted anubis as he started to sense for the nearest egyptian artefact he could find in New orleans to teleport back to Brooklyn. While taking his cards back._

" _So, see you this...uh early December?" asked anubis slightly hurriedly_

 _Thinking for a moment, he replied with a 'sure' before saying that it's highly possible that with with massive influx of 'jobs/errands' he's got do, while trying to track down Bloody Andy and escaped underworld souls, picking off any scum from space, different pantheons, on the streets etc, he might not make it. Anubis was already running towards a museum that just happened to have an obelisk in it's courtyard as Nico barely finished._

 _Looking towards Anubis's retreating figure, nico shrugged, wondering whether he would ever be able to meet people in a similar anti-climatic way that he and Anubis met in before he decided to wander into Rome alone (which had caused the 7 to originally try and rescue him from those 2 stupid giants) *****_

 _That was before Percy and Annabeth ever met the Kane siblings though.**_

 _Arranging all his cards neatly, then putting them in some plain, light brown boxes, Nico got up from the table. Sensor eyes flashing for nearly 10 seconds(he didn't have to worry about being blinded, it was a cloudy day, things would just seem slightly hazy.), he was looking around, checking for any sign of life, literally. Seeing none, he was just suddenly sensed/saw a life force, a small human one. Possibly a kid of about 4-5 years of age. Strange that such a small kid should be moving so quickly. Perhaps it was playing one of those stupid tag games._

 _...And it was coming rapidly towards him through the dense vegetation._

 _He soon heard small footsteps running at a fast pace, followed by a boy wildly trying to push the bushes out of his way. For some reason, the boy immediately stopped on spotting him, just looking at him with wide green eyes while panting heavily. The boy had golden blond hair with a slight tan to his skin tone, complimenting his round cheekbones._

 _Overall, the boy seemed to have a chubby sort of body under a light green half-sleeve shirt and brown pants, alongside shoes that looked like a mini-version of his own shoes._

 _Nico almost panicked when the boy just started ringing again and clutching his legs from behind. Now tht he right up against him, Nico could clearly see just how short the boy was (while trying to gently shake him off. He wasn't exactly comfortable with strangers, even if they're cute little chubby kids)_

" _Hey" nico asked the boy in his most non-threatening and gentle manner as possible, while trying to not look into those wide, innocent eyes that just screamed 'hug me' "what's wrong? Why're you running?" he asked_

" _Please mister help me. Scary people are trying to catch me" said the little boy in a voice so adorable, that it could probably crack his father's outer rock shell (a feat in itself though). But the boy said those words in a frightened manner._

 _Finally noticing the terror in those adorable eyes, Nico was worried. While he doesn't spend much time around normal people, he had seen enough to know that little kids don't get scared by playing silly games like tag._

 _-twang-whoosh-_

 _At that moment, Nico displayed an impressive set of reflexes when he pushed the kid away, took out a black knife from his black aviator's jacket's inner pocket and deflected the projectile with near perfect timing._

 _All without even raising his head to even see the projectile's pathway._

 _Looking towards the projectile, Nico started scrutinising it, seeing it was an arrow with a silver head/tip. Nico had gotten good at sensing event the faintest of magical energies, curses or enchantments (unless they were specifiacally made to be undetectable, then he couldn't even sense a low-level spell then)so it was no surprise when he recognised the familiar feeling of celestial bronze coming from the arrow._

 _Looking towards the pushes, Nico heard the shifting of bushes. Finally the culprits revealed themselves._

 _2 girls looking to be around his own age group came out of the forest, slowly, at a sedate pace, like a predator. The drawn bows and arrows alongside their recognizble silver parkas they and their group(assuming his assumptions were right) wore as a uniform was able to clue him on who these people were._

" _Step aside,_ boy _' the girl on the right, who slightly shorter than her companion by a foot with shoulder length ginger hair, spat out the word 'boy' as if it was pure venom in her mouth that she spat out "if you value your life" she completed in an obviously disdainful tone, while looking at him with eyes of pure fury._

 _Narrowing his eyes at them and only moving slightly to the left, still blocking the kid from their aim, nico replied with a modest tone, carefully choosing his words "Apologies, milady. I wasn't aware that the hunters of artemis are around here. Though I must ask why you're chasing this little boy here?"_

 _The taller hunter, whose hair was a dull blonde and much, much shorter, answered with a voice just like the shorter hunter's "this_ boy _here has stumbled across our camp while we were just settling down. Any male to see our hunt must be met with severe punishment. We were just going to give him the required sentencing. But his fleeing has now earned him a more strict one" she completed with her eyes now narrowing at him._

" _And what is the punishment he'll face?" asked nico with the same even tone, tucking his hands into his jacket's outer pockets_

'Artemis herself was only slightly lenient towards kids of younger age compared to teens, adults and old geezers...though she still turned that little boy into a girl' _thought nico '_

 _'_ her hunters on the other hand...they always were known to be more brutal...specially that phoebe chick...good thing she's dead...even though it must've been painful being shot in half by an arrow by that hunter giant...the irony of life and death..." _shaking his head to clear his mind, nico scanned his surroundings clearly._

" _That is none of your concern! Now step aside I you don't want to share his punishment!" hissed the shorter hunter, taking a step towards him, as if to warn him_

 _Looking back at the little boy, nico couldn't help but feel...something stir deep in his heart. Steeling himself, he looked at the archers with a steeled gaze, discreetly observing his surroundings to find any holes to exploit so he and the little boy don't get shish-kebabed._

 _Five minutes passed by. No one moved. The 2 hunters still remained in their stance, ready to release their arrows into the 2 males' offending appendages between their legs. The little boy still hid behind the older boy's legs, hoping he could somehow protect him from the scary girls._

 _All the while the ghost king just looked at the 2 archers intensely._

 _Until he let out a tired sigh._

" _Well...I guess I have no choice..." he said as if he fought a battle and lost, badly._

 _Hanging his head low, he started humming the tune of some unknown song. The humming caused the hunters to squint their eyes in confusion, wondering what the boy was up to. The same could be said for the little six year old child._

 _Immediately the humming was replaced by whistling, which seemed to have the same tune as the humming from before._

 _Slowly, Nico rose his head to the cloud skies, whistling louder with each second, eyes seemingly brimming with tears._

 _The hunters were really confused now. Just what was this boy doing?_

 _So focused were they on their targets that they never got the time to realize something was behind them, despite their natural skills and experience in hunting various beasts and males._

 _The two girls were suddenly tackled by something very, very big. The force was enough to knowck them onto the ground and make them lose their bows. Before they could get up, they were struck by someone right under their lower jaws. Immediately, their eyes closed and they collapsed to the ground, unmoving._

 _Checking to see how out of it they were, Nico breathed heavily, relieved that he could still keep his 'manatomy' intact. He turned around to find the little boy he just saved from certain death running around his 'pet' hellhound, mrs o leary._

 _The massive, red-eyed black-as-his-sword-furred hellhound had grown_ even _larger in the past few months. She was now roughly the size of a goddamn bus!_

 _Even though her first owner Daedulus had made Percy the new owner, ole-seaweed brain decided to hand ownership to Nico, since apparently he could take better care of her as they both have a connection to the underworld. Nico had been hesitant at first, but he agreed ultimately, seeing the logic in his words. Plus if mrs o leary were to suddenly revert to her old monster mentality, they would have no choice but to put her down. Nico was the only one who could stop her without killing her and return her to normal. Thus he became a hellhound's new master._

" _Puppy!" said the little boy excitedly. Nico wondered whether the child was seeing some sort of cute, adorable puppy in place of the massive hellhound. Shaking his head in wonder of the mist's power, he came over to them and started roughly scratching a certain spot within the black forest's ground on mrs o leary's neck._

 _Immediately, mrs o leary closed her eyes and settled down, enjoying the massage her master and friend was giving her._

 _The massage was however interrupted once Nico felt the little boy cluthing his legs again. The little boy said 'thank you mister' in a soft voice._

 _Bending down and ruffling the kid's hair while trying, and failing, to grin, he said it's no problem and asked his name_

" _Jericho" said the little boy._

" _That's a nice name, Jericho. it looks like you got lucky. These scary girls are not the nicest of people to males, be they even cute little boys like you" he said while pinching Jericho's cheeks slightly. "Now, can you tell me where-" "JERICHO" shouted a clearly female voice coming from the foliage, the same way Jericho and the hunters came out of._

 _Nico was just about to push Jericho behind him to protect him from another possible hunter (though this one's voice sounded more concerned than angry) when suddenly Jericho left him and hugged the girl who came out of the foliage..._

 _When Nico's eyes landed on her, he raised an eyebrow at her strange attire._

 _Not knowing that this was possibly the most important moment in his life, for this exact second is what changed the course of his life forever..._

 _-flashback end(back to the present)-_

Remebering that day made nico crack a smile. He'd met a very good person whom he became friends with that day. He really, really owed her. A lot.

Of course, once he informed her (vaguely mind you, don't wanna tell some random stranger everything that is impossible and make them call 911) of the imminent danger, they both parted ways quickly to avoid the wrath of the fast approaching hunters' pack whom they could still hear, despite them being nowhere close.

Next day, Thanatos came to him while he was sleeping dreamlessly, thankfully, telling him that he'd better watch his back now, because now Artemis and her entire troop of evil lesbians were after his head, believing the fabricated tale of Nico apparently attacking them and trying to violate them while hunting some pervert, only to be severely wounded by them easily and running away like some coward. Obviously no one believed them. Hell even lady Artemis herself didn't believe them! Everyone knew how imaginative and creative Artemis's little club can get when talking about being 'attacked' by boys.

This didn't stop them from wanting to pin cushion him with their arrows though. Artemis still didn't like knowing Nico interfered with her maidens' affairs and thus led the charge to kill him. Thanks to being master hunters and trackers, and with the goddess of the hunt leading them, Nico was constantly on the run for nearly a whole month, often taking Mrs O leary's help to shadow travel to all over the country, even beyond the continent and running as far as they could to the ends of Earth itself. Only reason he was alive and not discovered by them was because Thanatos often appeared in his dreams, warning him of how far away they are, what they're planning next, etc.

Nico then finally escaped to the underworld, knowing that's the one realm even Artemis herself wouldn't dare enter unless Hades himself allowed them to.

There, lady Hecate found him, and hired him too do a 'small' errand for her. In exchange for doing the mini-quest for her, she would cloak him with a special mist enchantment powerful enough hide him from Artemis's gaze. He was just about to take it, when he was completely blown away upon getting a new idea. He told her he would do _two_ quests for her, if she extends the mist-hiding enchantment power to _all_ demigods,greek and roman, claimed or unclaimed by their godly parent (still visible satyrs to allow them to still bring them to CHB) and would , in his case, cover him from all _supernatural_ beings of _all_ pantheons on Earth. Hecate was naturally shell-shocked for nearly 5 whole minutes, something Nico considered a personal achievement out of making a goddess do so.

Of course, he instead ended up doing dozens of quests over the span of 4 and a half months cause his requests were to lofty to be fulfilled by two meager errands, taking him to various places, meeting interesting characters and overall, exploring what real life is like. As mentioned in the shitty prologue, he paid a very heavy price.

In the end, it was worth it.

Though Artemis and her hunters somehow managed to tag him in Chicago...and that time in LA while fighting Al, then monsters and dealing with Wonder woman...

Chicago's memories always made him cringe. He _may_ have gone a little too far when he faced them instead of running for once. He had summoned a large number of hellhounds and undead zombie and skeleton soldiers to face them.

He could honestly confess that that day was probably one of the most intense days of his life, cause he was pretty sure he actually saw Thanatos somewhere in the city.

At one point he almost faced Artemis, who'd become a little too arrogant and tried to pin-cushion him a little too lazily, only to end up dazed 2 seconds later on her back in some stranger's house, probably wondering how the fuck did the boy break every bone in her entire body.

From there on, he suddenly found himself liking how always made those man-haters get more and more pissed, probably wondering how he kept escaping everytime he was so close. Aside from rarely visiting his old friends and family in Underworld, CHB, CJ, the 51st nome in Brooklyn and trying to beat Anubis in Mythomagic, he actually found it fun frustrating them every once a month, in a sense _hunting/stalking_ them like prey instead of the other way around, without anyone even knowing! Serves 'em right for keeping him on the run like some sort of fugitive for a goddamn month!

Currently, everyone around Nico had gotten slightly worried on seeing him just silently and blankly gazing at nothing in particular, then suddenly smiling like some sort of goddamned maniac.

"Hunters, you say?" said Nico in a voice that made them shiver slightly for unknown reasons.

His obsidian dark eyes were glinting with a certain look that both Percy and Hazel recognized.

One they'd seen when facing the death god himself in battle.

"Well then, we got ourselves a fineweek ahead, ladies and gents" said Nico pecualiraly and lowly, feeling excited on the prospect of for once, completely shaming them

"Um, dude you ok?" asked Percy in an obviously worried tone

"Oh, I'm ok. Really, I am. I think it's the hunters you should really worry about." nico said cryptically. "So, what are the other 2 teams?" he asked with genuine curiosity in a normal voice now.

That got everyone back to normal, though in the back of their minds, everyone was still kind of worried about nico.

-2 Hours later-

"Let me get this straight. Andrew 'Bloody Andy' Lawrence, the bastard who thinks he's the Luke Castellan of Today, seeing as how he seems pretty eager to face the underworld _and_ Olympus just to kill me to avenge his brother, whom I've been unsuccesful in finding up until recently, actually _stole some sort of time machine thing from your mother?!"_ nico exclaimed once Al finished telling him the reason for bringing him here in the first place.

Nico didn't have to worry about any campers or even dryads(tree people/spirits) possibly overhearing them, since they were actually in a secret cave that they both, alongside Frank Zhang, had accidently discovered.

"It's not a time machine" exasperatedly said Alabaster for the third time "it's a magical grenade that can literally slow down time fro Andrew for a limited time period, no thanks to the small essence of Kronos's time sand in that thing. It's kinda like that thing Kratos used in god of war 2".

"Ookay. Still, why does Hecate even have some sort of device that she apparently made in the first titan war to fight kronos? And how did Andrew even steal it?"

"I seriously have no idea why she even has one in the first place. Though, my mom may have an idea on who actually stole it, but she told me to work on getting it back as soon as possible. It also kind of makes sense concerning how he fought you back in Gotham really." replied Andrew

Realization hit Nico like a ton of bricks (and he knows what that feels like. Really...) Andrew hadn't even seemingly inched forward before he got the first stab. In fact,only now he noticed that during the fight Andy had suddenly withdrawn, backing away a few steps, only to get a second stab.

"You know, it makes perfect sense that he'd take something that can literally give him an easy opening to go in for the kill against someone like you while you can't fight back. He'd stand no chance even if you play fair and pull all your punches back."

All of a sudden Nico's H-phone started ringing again. Taking it out and seeing the reciever, Nico squinched his eyes in confusion at the caller's ID"

Recieving the call, he asked curiously "What now?"

"It's August" was the reply he received in that famous growl meant to evoke fear.

Raising an eyebrow in confusion"So"?

...

"You forgot, didn't you?"

Now thoroughly confused, Nico asked "What do you mean?"

Hearing a quiet sigh, he was rewarded with the answer "It's Monday, 1st August. He was born on a Monday this month"

Eyes widening, he was suddenly rigid and his left eye started twitching a bit, something that his friend noticed.

"Dude, what's wrong?"

Narrowing his eyes, Nico only said "I'll be there by tonight" before cutting off the call.

Looking Alabaster in the eye, Nico said only one thing:-

"We've got a certain 8-feet large zombie to hunt"

Now it was Alabaster's turn to be confused. "Uh, what?"

*sigh* " It's Grundy month, dumbo" he replied, annoyed.

That got Alabaster to turn as pale and rigid as a statue like Nico had just a minute before, before mentioning a profanities, mostly antagonizing the gods, bbefore walking alongside Nico out of the cave.

They soon parted ways, going towards their respective cabins to stock up on some inventory for the long week ahead.

Not knowing the chaos that was about to spring up soon.

 **I'm pretty sure everyone who has the slightest knowledge of DC media knows who Nico will meet aka his sort of rogue.**

 **For those of you who haven't read 'supplementary' books like "The demigod diaries", Alabaster C. Torrington is an actual character who appears in this book, who was seeking the help of a human who apparantly researches death to possibly find a way to permanently kill the monster Lamia, who was out for his blood.**

 **Lou Ellen is also a canon minor character (She appeared in TLO and BOO).**

 **This chapter was really just to offer a slight glimpse of Percy Jackson and co. and to bring forth a problem that Nico is facing: lady Artemis and her hunters. They aren't exctly villains that I would classify, more like they have a certain hate relationship that most police officers show towards heroes in both DC and Marvel.**

 **Nico has also, as I mentioned in this chapter, done not only hunting down the escapees of the underworld but also fighting fighting wherever there is, be it supernatural, alien or even human affairs and getting his life back on track while also doing various 'quests' for multiple gods...and not only of the Greco-Roman pantheon. This has resulted in him gaining incredible skill and experience alongside multiple 'powerups' within just 2 years. I will reveal these powerups one by one as the story progresses.**

 **There's one thing I realized. Seeing as how the whole chapter and subsequently the next chapter are in flashbacks, I actually wrote a flashback _within a flashback without even realizing it until halfway through!_ Amazing how things work themselves out, eh?**

 **Next chapter coming up: Undead's hunter(Part 2: How he rose )(Or: Welcome to Gotham!)**

 **Litestryke out! Peace!**


	5. 5Undead hunter(Part2:Welcome to Gotham)

**Hi! I'm back! Sooo, just a few things I have to set right for everyone. In the previous chapter, Nico was originally going to refuse Hazel's request by telling her that he could get called away on some mission by the JL for the team, while later in the chapter it's revealed that he's keeping his dealings with JL a secret. This is because in this setting, many demigods actually look down upon metahumans and superheroes since they believe that they'd be no match for the gods (which is true to some extent). I actually incorporated the idea of demigods not liking superheroes from various PJO-avengers and PJO-YJ crossover fics, where for some reason, authors make the demigods seem more powerful than superheroes and villains. As if! In my opinion, there's a very small possibility that demigods even as powerful as Percy can best even the likes of B-grade heroes. Only powerful beings like gods and titans can do so. There was one PJO-avengers fic where Percy _somehow_ managed to cut off one of the Incredible Hulk's amrs with just 1 swing of a sword! WTF?!**

 **Anyway, this chapter in fact reveals Nico's very first rogue (not counting Andrew), which will be in the current flashback**

 **I would also like to address the reviews of anon san chan and risa silvara:-**

 **To chan- UP YOURS ASSHOLE! IT"S MY STORY! UNDERSTOOD?! I COULD'VE EASILY MADE NICO STRAIGHT BUT I DIDN"T TO ATLEAST IN A WAY STAY CLOSE TO HIS CANON SEXUALITY! AND APHRODITE IS PRETTY EASY TO PORTRAY A SLUT. ONLY REDEEMING QUALITY ABOUT HER WAS HER TALK WITH PIPER ABOUT LOVE IN TLO!**

 **-huff-huff-**

 **ok. ok. I'm calm now. I actually would like to apologize about my rant aimed at you chan (that is, if you're reading this at all), but really, I must thank you. You made me realize that I was seemingly bashing nearly all PJO characters except for Nico's family and minor characters. I would like to correct that actually, Nico's paranoia makes him a little too distant from a majority of PJO-HOO people since they know of his 'dark-emo' phase. Thus, deep down he still distrusts his old friends because they know of the person he used to be, even after everything they've been through. This will in fact be a very, very important factor much much later into the story.**

 **To risa-thanks much! You even gave me actual ideas with your requests! Also, Nico's fatal flaw, grudge holding (due to, in a way, separating him and his only family Bianca) makes him still spiteful of the hunters, even though he's learned not to let any grudge he grows consume him. It makes him also pretty eager to humiliate them utterly (Thalia being an exception however). This grudge against them got bolstered thanks to being nearly killed alongside an innocent boy for merely 'disturbing their hunt' and 'disgracing them' with their presence and then wanting his head for his actions. Regarding his feelings for percy...he still has some lingering feelings for him buried very deep down, but it's of no consequence in this story (for now atleast...). Also, I dont know why but I DETEST Thalico! So you don't have to worry about that.**

 **Reynico bromance...never really thought about it...but I'll see what I can do about it...**

 **BTW, I haven't read 'Trials of Apollo' series and frankly, I'm not interested either. Same with Magnus Chase. So don't expect guys like Nero, Thor, etc. etc. to appear anytime soon**

 **Same with Kane chronicles.**

 **Also, I changed the idea surrounding this story from revealing how the villain here rose in this fanfic verse to just Nico trying to beat it accidentally crossing over with a tema mission.**

 **Thus, title change!**

 **Anyways, on with the story!**

"Nico"-normal human speech

'Nico'- robotic/artificial intelligence speaking

" _Nico"_ -human speech in whispers/emphasized words/thoughts

"NICO"-normal voice shouting

" **NICO"-** Loud demonic voice shouting/yelling/screaming

" **Nico"** \- demonic/powerful voice

" _ **Nico"-**_ powerful/demonic speaker thinking

 **Chapter 4**

 **Undead hunter (Part 2: Welcome to Gotham)**

 **(Or: Attack of the eight foot zombie!)**

 **forests around Camp Half-Blood, 5:30 pm( still 2 days before present events):-**

Nico was currently walking through the forests at a quick, but still slightly slow pace, trying not to make a single sound and be stealthy enough to not even alert the dryads of the trees...or any random camper just wandering the place for some random reason. It wasn't hard really, sneaking around and blending in with the environment, even with a place full of normal people came quite easily to him. Plus the low setting of the Sun over the horizen alongside the tall trees provided some pretty soft shadows. Not dark or even large enough to shadow travel through, but he could still hide within them like a pro.

He was heading towards the Hades cabin to retrieve some equipment that he kept there to fight heavy hitting or superstrong individuals like cyclopes, giants, titans, etc. mainly because the...person they were supposed to capture was of this category.

Hopefully Alabaster invested in some stuff similar to his inventory.

The sound of grunts, moans and the rustling of leaves made him stand still. Narrowing his eyes in recognition at the type of noises that was being made by the obviously two people, Nico upped his pace so he could get as far as possible from this part of the forest.

There was a short but steep landslide to his left which allowed him to see two blondes on the ground. They were quite far away from him but he could still discern that all the clothes they wore were now discarded and scattered on the ground around them. Turning his head quickly to make the image of the naked people in his head as small as possible, Nico soon started sprinting.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

"Did you hear that?" asked a clearly female voice, panting heavily

"No" replied a male voice, before grunting and moaning filled the air again.

Stormy grey eyes staring right into ice blue ones, all throughout their perverse actions.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 **Hades Cabin, Camp-Half Blood, 5:45 pm:-**

Looking around and using his sensing power to make sure there was no one around nor in the cabin, Nico went inside quietly, closing the door behind him.

Inside cabin Hades, it was dark. Not dark enough so that you couldn't even see your own hand in front of you but dark enough to make sure that you would have squint and focus your senses, eyes particularly, to see anything atleast 5 feet away from you. All the windows( which were 12 in total, 4 along each lateral wall and 2 on the front and rear ones) were slightly tinted to not allow much light to seep into the cabin, allowing only a few rays in. The cabin had 10 bare beds in total with comfortable enough mattresses on them lining along the wall on his far end wall opposite to the wall with the entrance door had a door that led to to a small bathroom which was almost comparable to a five-star hotel's bathrooms.

The wall on his right was decorated with all sorts of portraits, pictures, drawings, bookshelves containing enough books on nearly all subjects and genres to make Athena's whole cabin slightly jealous(from study of mist to Necromancy, from detectives to soldiers, from strategy to human psyche, from history to religion, you name it!), some odd objects hung on the same wall which were actually spoils and trophies he'd found on various quests or adventures, etc.

He headed towards the right wall and stood in front of a bookshelf and pulled out a hardback blue covered book almost as thick as his hand.'Without pause, he opened the book, revealing it as actually a false compartment for a normal knife carefully put in slightly larger than itself indentation that spanned the entire 'book's ' length, from cover to cover. He immediately slit his own left thumb with the knife, just a small nick that drew barely a drop of his blood(he didn't visibly flinch at the little cut though), stained his thumb with the now exiting blood, pressed it on the shelf surface where he'd picked the fake book from and the effect was immediate. The shelf suddenly vanished as thick green clouds suddenly emerged from it's base, enveloping the shelf, the n disappearing itself, with no trace of itself or the shelf even being there. Now it instead revealed a rectangular opening roughly the size of an average house's door, leading down a a flight of staircases that looked to end in darkness itself. Nico practically rushed through and descended the stairs.

All this he'd done with a sense of urgency, obvious to any observer as he practically rushed everytime he took a step.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

It seemed like an eternity but Nico already knew that the seemingly endless staircase that seemed to lead down into the deepest and darkest cavern on all of Earth took merely two minutes with his pace. The slightly narrow hallway he stepped into was black, the only light there was now Nico's glowing red eyes. His footsteps echoed throughout the hallway and finally ended as he placed his still blood-coated left thumb on the wall in front of him.

If there were any lights on, they would see that somehow, lines and geometric patterns that werent' visble before on the wall in front of him suddenly started filling up with copius amounts of red liquid, seemingly coming from his thumb, despite the dried and caked blood.

Once all the at-first-glance meaningless mumbo-jumbo of criss-crossing lines that covered this wall was red, the wall shook before quickly sinking down into the floor with a sound like that o grinding stone against stone. Nico immediately fast-walked through. The wall closed rose up behind him, again with that annoying grinding sound.

Nico's eyes immediately lost their menacing red glow, dressing the room in pure darkness. Suddenly, the room was bathed with artificial light as various white tube lights on the ceilings and the wall turned on by their own accord.

The room was circular in shape and lined with bland tiles of white, blue, grey, green and black. Various tables lay scattered around the room in no particular order. Each table was just a blank, grey sheet of steel standing on 4 legs.

Each table held a variety of weapons, flasks, blood packs, etc. There were all manners of weapons, from firearms like grenade launchers to even bladed weapons like swords, switchblades, bows and arrows.

The flasks seemed to be filled with all sorts of strange chemicals of varying colors, from to blue to black to orange. If one were to bathe the room in darkness again and focus their eyes real hard, they would be able to see glows coming off of the liquids on those flasks.

The blood in the blood packs were not normal either. Rather than being the usual deep red, these were pure black. Like completely black as if some sort of strong black dye had been mixed in with it.

One table however, didn't have any of these things on it. This one was in the center of the room and had a large case on it, large enough to act as a coffin for a full grown man.

Nico approached that very table and lifted the lid of the box by taking of the 2 metal straps that locked it and analysed the box's contents.

Inside the box was a large amount of pinkish styrofoam. Seeing the styrofoam, Nico glared at it, vowed to have revenge against Leo (even though he wasn't the one who put it there) for no particular reason and subsequently started removing it.

Once he cleared the box of styrofoam, he finally pulled out what he was looking for. Lifting it up with his hands, the object was revealed to be in fact, pitch black armor, complete with a torso piece, arm and leg vambraces attached to the torso piece by some nylon mesh at the junctions where the limbs attach to the main body.

The torso piece had some red designs and depictions of various scenes of death, similar to the ones on the ceiling of his room in Hades' palace. The designs however, seemed to circumnavigate around some sort of flower which was colored dark blue. A botanist or gardener would be able to tell, with keen eyes, that it was in fact, the outline of a rose.

His and his family's favourite flower after all, had to be on his battle armor.

The same arrangement was on the back of the armor as well.

The bottom of the leggings had some sort of holsters and straps while the vambraces had some sort of strange mechanic apparatus underneath the wrist parts.

A hood was attached to the torso piece at it's neck base and was dark grey.

He then placed the armor down on a nearby table devoid of anything on it, then reached back into the box again, retrieving 2 grey-ish objects. One was a belt with hoops on it, similar to a mechanic's meant to hold all sorts of objects. The other object was a plain mask, also the same shade of gray as the hood on his armor. It was plain, except for 2 black eyeholes that looked slightly crystal-shaped, almost like how one narrows their eyes at you. The mask had 4 black leather straps/cloths emerging from it's lateral sides, 2 per side. The straps seemed to have belt-buckle like structures at their ends.

Placing the two beside the armor, he soon stared at all the objects in the room, wondering which potions and weapons he could use again against a being who could face the likes of the Man of steel and still walk away.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

 **30 minutes later, Thalia's tree:-**

Under the branches of Thalia's tree, dressed in a plain brown overcoat with a hood which made him look like some sort of arthurian mage, Alabaster was once again waiting for Nico.

This time, though he was more preoccupied with the reason they would have to leave camp now.

This time he wasn't given a nasty surprise like last time when Nico emerged from the shade of Thalia's tree.

"You got everything we need?" inquired Nico in a muffled metallic voice, dressed in the armor that he, Leo valdez and his wife Calypso worked on.

Seeing Nico in that armor still gave Alabaster the creeps, especially looking into those creepy eyeholes. Despite working in Kronos's monster/demigod ranks for months and facing some pretty twisted demons, Alabaster couldn't help but feel as if Death was watching him when that damned mask gazed at him.

"Yeah. Btw I told Hazel that we're just leaving for a while and we'll be back before Friday" he replied with a straight face.

"I'm sure her reaction was something strong"

"Dude, that mouth of hers is really something. She could probably make a hellhound's ears bleed" he stated, cringing at the memories of Nico's half-sister practically yelling herself hoarse at him and Nico for leaving again so quickly and promising them both painful deaths.

Considering who her father was, Al really didn't want to test her words.

"Hmph. That's Hazel for you. Come on, Gotham's waiting" he replied Nico humorously before grabbing his arm and then both of them disappearing in a swirl of shadows that emerged from the tree. Again without warning him.

XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXx

 **Gotham academy, Gotham city, August 3, 22:30:-**

 _'Thinking back now, I should've probably summoned a thousand undead sodiers'_ thought Nico, groaning as he tried to dodge the massive fist about to smash him into the ground before being carried away by a yellow blur.

The blur slowed down to reveal Kidflash having carried Nico by wrapping his arms around his waist. Nico immediately tripped kidflash before being blasted by a strong gust of wind which launched him to the wall of the gym.

Again groaning in pain, Nico looked up from his sitting position against the wall to see the robot and the giant now fighting each other,trading powerul punches that would've shattered entire streets if they'd been hit.

From his position, Nico could see the moonlight lighting up the left side of the giant, revealing unnaturally chalk white skin, filthy white unkempt hair, sickly yellow eyes that were wide with clear madness, a strange antique like black dress shirt over a white buttoned shirt and balck pants torn at the feet. All of which were torn and ripped and clearly overstrained from just keeping what threads they could to cover the buly figure.

And a frowning mouth could be seen that opened to reveal disgusting, rotten yellow teeth, black gums, and a thick voice yelling:-

" **GRUNDY SMASH!"**

 **Wayne Mansion, Gotham city, August 1, 6:17 pm:-**

As soon as Alabaster could feel solid Earth underneath his feet, he released a breath he'd been holding since as soon as those shades consumed them and now breathing slightly heavily

"Oh quit acting like you just took part in the olympics. You've gone through shadow-travelling enough times by now to get used to it." Nico said snarkily before suddenly blindfolding Alabaster with a black cloth wrapped around his head.

"A little warning would have been nice. I'm still taking some getting used to it. And do we have to do this everytime we come here?" replied Al with frustration and putting a hand on his blindfold to refer to it about the question.

"You know how he's like. Always paranoid...though most of the time that turns out to be a good thing" answered Nico

"Yeah. _Most of the time._ It's not like I'm gonna just blabber about the dark knight's secret lair's location to everyone! I know how to keep secrets. I did it for a whole month before joining Luke's army and deserting CHB!" loudly stated Al

"One can never be too cautious" said a familiar, growly voice from Al's left.

"nice to see ya bats" stated Nico

"Can't say the same from my side" muttered Al loud enough for Nico to hear it without knowing.

"Phhm. Good one" chuckled Nico

"What?"

"Nothing Al. Nothing at all" nico said in manner that made Al sure without his eyes that Nico was smirking for some unknown reason relating to him.

"Grundy attacked last night" said the unmistakable voice of Batman.

"Where?" asked the 2 demigods at the same time, becoming instanlty serious.

Typing a few controls into his wrist mod. that was likely connected to his batcomputer, a blue coloured 3D holographic projection of a building appeared in in the space between the 3.

Nico narrowed his eyes on seeing it. It looked vaguely familiar.

"At about 10:30 pm, last night an entire apartment complex on Rockaway street in East Gotham was demolished completely. Only one man, Jacob Samson, who had been on his way home through that area saw that the building collapsed and fell. Moments later he saw an extremely large figure practically burst from the rubble and escaped. Samson then promptly called the police." Batman revealed "Given the site and the time of the month, I'd wager it had to be none other than Solomon Grundy"

"That's the same place where I faced Andrew" said Nico all of a sudden "It's too much of a coincidence that the that a week after me and Lawson fought at got destroyed a week later by none other than the guy we're always lying in wait for" he stated suspiciously.

Alabaster was surprised by that fact but not having anything to contribute, kept silent.

"It's possible that they've got a mutual partnership. Grundy might've not only destroyed the scene, but also possibly retrieved something of importance to Bloody Andy." spoke Batman

"If there was, I wouldn't have seen it. I didn't even explore half the building's body and the only remains of anyone working under Andrew there would be just some robots and some thugs" said Nico

Batman narrowed his lens for just a split second when the ghost king mentioned 'thugs' before speaking again "I'll check out the scene. You 2 go and find anything you can in slaughter swamp. If there's nothing there, then search the docks. They are further East of where Grundy smashed that building down. If you face him by chance, call me" he said before briskly turning and going to god-knows-where.

"Damn. I hate that swamp" muttered Alabaster

"I hear ya. That place has so many lingering dead spirits and corpses it gives me a headache to block out their collective voices" said Nico

Al looked at him with a 'seriously' look. "That's your only problem?"he asked, bewildered.

"I've been in loads of swamps...believe me when I say this but some swamps are full of some really weird stuff" said Nico as he thought of his part man, part plant friend in the bayou.

" _mom and granny have some very strange friends"_ he though, bemused.

"Come on" was all he said before clasping his hand on Alabaster's shoulder

"Wait, what?! Nonono wait a minu-" was all Alabaster could get out before the darkness of the cave consumed them again.

 **Slaughter swamp, outskirts of Gotham, 6:25 pm:-**

Appearing underneath a large tree, the two demigods landed on a marshy surface with roots trying to emerge from it.

Again, Alabaster was breathing a little heavily and slapped Nico's head lightly, which elicited a small 'ow' from Nico. Alabaster then proceeded to untie the cloth covering his eyes, allowing him to see once again.

It was quite dark here. The low setting of the sun cast a dull red sky overhead while the large vegetation of the swamp all around them towered over them, casting an ominous feeling alongside the large shadows.

Anyone normal would've been shaking and sweating like hell out of nervousness.

Nico then looked back at the tree from whose shade he shadow-travelled out of, more specifically at the marks on the bark.

To any passerby who happened to come by from here, unlikely as that was, the markings would look like a bunch of symbols and letters of 5 different languages cluttered together to somehow form words, some arrows and some crosses.

How did he understand this garbled mess? Why simple! He wrote it himself!

Spending time with Leo tended to make one speak any and all sentences in half-language 1 and then half-language 2. In a multilingual's case like himself though he tended to go beyond just 2.

Nico had made these marks to lead to the one spot in slaughter swamp that made it so dangerous to traverse.

The resting place of Solomon Grundy.

"Come on, let's go" Nico said briskly before heading to Alabaster's right at a sedate pace before being quickly followed by him now.

They made a few lefts, a few rights, often time taking the help of some more italian or greek letters that Nico carved into some other trees' barks to act as landmarks.

Finally they stopped in a large clearing of grass, in the middle of which was a ten-feet wide, 11-feet deep pit, completely hollow.

The 2 stopped just a few feet short of the edge of the pit and pulled out their weapons. Alabaster drew out a small, leaf shaped knife and a blank, white card about as large as his palm while Nico took out a beretta and a black knife.

"Nothing here" said Alabaster after looking into the pit with an intense gaze.

"Yeah. Can't even feel any trace of Grundy's unnatural half-life force here" muttered Nico

"Well, I can't sense even a smudge of any sort of supernatural force or element." muttered Al

"Hmm. Batman said to check the docks at the east side if there's nothing here" mentioned nico

"Any idea why there?" asked Al

"Nope. Let's still check it out though" said before nico shadow-travelled with Alabaster for the third time that day using the shades of some large nearby trees.

 **Gotham docks, Gotham city, 7:00 pm:-**

Once Alabaster was back on solid ground, he managed to not gasp in air this time, having been prepared beforehand now.

"What's the matter? No gasps for being alive this time?" asked Nico sarcastically

"Yeah yeah. Keep making fun of how I still can't get used to that no matter what" said Alabaster with a snarl, That was the moment a familiar buzzing sound started emanating at the back of the ghost king's head, causing him to narrow his eyes behind his armor mask.

"So, where do we start?" inquired Al

"Calling Batman for that" stated Nico as he shoved his right hand into one of the many enchanted hoop/pocket things of the gray belt around his armored waist. The hoops were seemingly devoid of anything despite the fact that the ghost king suddenly pulled out his H-phone out of it even though it seemed to large to fit into any of the hoops.

After dialling Batman's number, Nico waited a moment before relaying the situation and stressing on how he and his friend couldn't feel even a tiny residue of anything magical at slaughter swamp. Batman provided them the location of atleast 3 warehouses that he suspected to be Grundy's most frequented places.

Nico curtly switched off his phone and told Alabaster what he needed to know.

After wandering around looking for one of the warehouses they needed to find, Nico spotted one with a large '7' in faint blue above it's large garage like door. Heading towards the dilapidated 2-storey building briskly, he narrowed his eyes before walking slower, buzzing now getting louder gradually as he got nearer to the building. Gradually he slowed his pace so much such that it almost seemed as if he were a predator slowly inching towards his prey.

Alabaster had also narrowed his eyes just a second after Nico did, before walking side by side with him, following his lead.

Soon they found themselves in front of the rusted garage door.

Turning towards each other, they silently nodded before Alabaster reached a hand into his brown cloak, pulling out an ordinary looking duct tape roller. He stuck a large amount of duct tape on the garage door, forming a square large enough for them to comfortably step through once it seemingly started to disintegrate the enclosed portion of the door into thin air.

In the warehouse, the darkness was so intense that one wouldn't be even able to see their hand in front of them. That was when a pair of blood red dots appeared alongside a hand beneath a floating ball of fire.

Slowly the owners of the 2 walked through the warehouse. That was when 2 voices uttered:-

"Now"

The bright objects disappeared and a large crash could be heard alongside the breaking of cement, shaking the ground strongly as if something large like a meteor crashed into the ground.

"Druid!"

"Got it"

The dark warehouse was suddenly bathed in bright white light, as if the Sun decided to beat down on them specifically with all it's fury.

" **ARGHH ! GRUNDY EYES HURT!"** shouted a large, monstrous voice in a mixture of pain and rage.

That was when a gunshot rang out, a flip like sound similar to a light's switch being flipped and the bright disappeared to be replaced by the artificial white lights of various CFL tubes in the ceiling.

Ghost king and Alabaster were now on the oppsite sides of the warehouse laterally and in front of them was the 8-feet tall undead monster known to terrorize Gotham randomly (sometimes Metropolis for some reason), in August especially and refused to die no matter what.

Of course he would attack on the closest Monday before August if Monday wasn't the first day of that month.

After all, Solomon Grundy had been born on a Monday...or so he said.

Said zombie was still stumbling around blindly, hands still covering his eyes, each step sending a slight tremor through the ground.

Nico immediately raised a leg high and slammed it down on the concrete ground so hard that it formed a small, but deep crater with spiderweb like cracks around the impact spot.

At the same time the ground under Grundy's feet suddenly shook hard and collapsed, causing Grundy to fall down and be half-buried under 7 feet of debris, leaving only above his shoulders.

It seemed by this time the monster's vision had returned because he was glaring dead on at the Ghost king's figure standing in front of him, aiming a beretta right between the zombie's yellow eyes.

"Miss me fucker? In case you didn't, it doesn't matter, cause this time you're gonna stay full 100% dead this time!" the last few words were practically shouted out by the Ghost king laced with fury.

That was because he really doesn't like any form of interference creating rifts or abominations in the natural order of Life and Death, Grundy being one of them. The concept of resurrection was something he spitted upon. Ironic considering him...

His anger at Grundy did NOT have anything to do with the fact that during that one time Nico had been in Metropolis trying to trying to take part in a massive orgy organized by a satanic cult just for fun (then later slaughter said cult as penance for their inhuman crimes) Grundy somehow just broke into the cultist warehouse (their temporary HQ) literally chomped off the head of the chick about to suck him off, grabbed him in his large disgusting hands, then proceeded to run all the way to the downtown area of Metropolis and demolish an entire shopping mall using nothing but HIM as a goddamn Club! And then repeating the process with the brothel right next to it!

...destroying the brothel using him and interrupting one of the best moments in his life only took a small part in his hatred for the dumb zombie.

Good thing he hadn't taken off any other part of his armor aside from the crotch part otherwise he'd definitely be an unrecognizable mess before the Man of steel was anywhere nearby.

Had Grundy atleast moved his eyes to his left, he would've seen the brown cloaked demigod seemingly painting strange symbols and patterns onto the ground in front of him, looking like a five-pointed star.

He didn't though, mainly because the ghost king unloaded an entire magazine of bullets the zombie's head, staining the white skin with red blood gushing out from the mess of a forehead.

"How long?" asked Ghost king as he looked to where Alabaster was working

"Just a minute more" said Alabaster a little frantically

"We don't have a minute" bit back Nico before whipping out his H-phone and calling Batman

After telling the dark knight of what just transpired and relaying their location, he ended the call after getting an affirmative from him that he was coming over.

He was just taking out the empty mag. from his sidearm when he heard a growl, then the rumbling of the ground under him and suddenly the world was upside-down as he seemingly flew through air before unceremoniously landing a few feet away on his back. He immediately got up, the armor having acted as a very good shock absorber to just in time see his friend launch fireball after fireball at the zombie, now free from his earthly confines making his way towards Alabaster, only slightly stumbling as each fireball met their mark. He seemed to shrug the burning off as if it was nothing, looking like a fire demon as he stamped towards the son of Hecate while the latter walked backwards slowly.

Pulling out his other beretta aiming at at his chalk white head, that was when Ghost king noticed something at Solomon's feet. Or more specifiaclly, on the ground under his feet.

Locking eyes with Alabaster, they shared a grin (though Nico's was still hidden behind that mask) before Alabaster shouted out in ancient greek " _YARNS OF HEPHAUSTUS_ "

Suddenly, the star diagram Alabaster painted on the ground with a red paintbrush, directly underneath Solomon Grundy, glowed a bright neon yellow before strange ethereal yellow glowing strings emerged from the drawing in thousands, wrapping around the 8-foot zombie tightly.

" **AAARRRGGHH! GRUNDY HATE STUPID MAGIC BOY!"** roared Grundy as he struggled to tear out of the surprisingly strong yarns.

However, he failed in his goal and ultimately ended up falling on his side, the ground suffering a strong tremor from the landing.

"YES" yelled both demigods, pumping the air with fists

Their victory was short-lived though once they noticed Grundy's eyes flash bright yellow before the yarns started to seemingly _merge_ with Grundy, disappearing under his clothes and skin.

A bright yellow flash later and suddenly there was only empty space where lay Solomon Grundy.

With wide eyes, neither moved, only standing still and looking where the monster was just a second ago writhing in anger.

For 2 whole minutes they stayed like that before a voice broke them out of it, causing their heads to snap to above and seeing the dark knight rappelling down.

"I'm gonna ask again only once" growled Batman "What happened?"

 **Mount Justice, Happy harbour, Rhode island, 12:30 pm, August 3rd:**

Currently within the training/mission room of the cave, Nico was furiously putting a vicious beatdown on various blue holographic humanoids with no identifiable features on them. They had completely smooth and round heads and faces, no clothes on their person and seemed to be extremely devoid of intelligence considering how they just keep charging towards him blindly even after seeing how quickly and efficiently Nico just dispatched dozens of them in just 3 seconds.

Nico was punching and kicking left and right, ducking, bobbing, weaving between them and often switching between attacking anything moving in his line of sight like a wild, unstoppable animal unchained to a more cold, precise and calculating person.

He had going at this since the past half hour and he still not showing any signs of strain or slowing down, except for excessive sweat pouring off of his skin.

Despite the workout, his mind was still on the events of the last two days. After the failed capture of Solomon Grundy and Batman's arrival, they went back to the batcave via the admittably awesome Batmobile (while shadow-travelling was still cool and all, he really wanted to get one of those. It was just so cool!), they exchanged notes.

Batman had strangely, found practically nothing matching his description of the robots he'd fought while trying to corner Andrew, not even any piece of machinery indicating to be a part of a robot's body. There weren't any human corpses either.

Batman had asked them how Grundy escaped and after telling him everything, they revealed they had no clue about what they just saw with Grundy and yarns.

That was when Alabaster told them that when the ropes started merging with Grundy, he felt as if some sort of magical 'network' that seemed recent and foreign to Grundy's body seemingly absorbed the yarns mainly because the yarn itself had actually been purely mystical. This, according to Alabaster, was mostly theoretical from his view.

It was something atleast.

This was becoming all too coincidential and suspicious though. Grundy destroying the place where he and Bloody Andy fought, with no sign of the remains of Andrew's drones when there should be and suddenly the damn zombie has the power to absorb magic energy?

But Nico still couldn't connect the dots. It was as if something were still missing. But what?

That nagging thought, alongside his frustration on how he severely under-estimated Grundy and felt that that was the reason for which it was able to escape so easily even when it was finally within their grasp.

After that, Batman told them to still search for anything they could from their end while continued his own investigation.

Neither knowing where to start, they decided to return to camp half-blood.

Again, shadow-travelling.

They made sure to be as stealthy as possible as they wandered through the dark forests around CHB's borders and found that they were just in time for dinner.

Going to their respective cabins' table, Nico sat with Hazel while Alabaster joined his half-siblings.

Hazel was honestly surprised that they were already back, but Nico told that a friend of their's had asked for their help regarding his small hometown being attacked by some strange werewolf like creatures which turned out to be just a nuisance for the two to finish off with ease.

Hazel then proceeded to tell him about the finalized teams for the upcoming War flag game.

Most of the minor gods' cabins would be merely an audiance of sorts, watching the match play out via a huge cinema hall screen in the amphitheatre showing the proceedings through enchantment spells.

Some minor cabins joined the teams but were too numerous to name. So hazel only named the 12 major olympians.

Team A would consist of Zeus, Athena, Ares, Hades, Demeter, Aphrodite.

Team B would consist of Poseidon, Hephaustus, Apollo, Hermes, Dionysus.

Team C would be the Artemis cabin

Hecate's cabin was, fortunately on team A so nIco didn't have to worry about humiliating Alabaster or Lou by accident.

He was slightly surprised that Annabeth and Percy wouldn't be on the same teams but Hazel told him that this wasn't the first time that some couples end up on opposing teams. She and Frank and Jason and Piper have separated sometimes.

Still, it was surprising considering their bond and all.

After that, he idly listened to Hazel going on about various strategies and fortifications while mentally planning on how to beat both A and B to the punch and just snatch the flag from C while not even letting anyone know of his secret plans.

Speaking of which, Artemis's hunters were to arrive tommorow, so azel warned him to make sure to stay out of their line of sight.

Nico planned on doing that and the exact opposite of that at the same time...if that even makes sense at all...

Joining Hazel to sacrifice their food in the bonfire for the gods, Nico prayed first and foremost to his father, mother, grandmother, Thanatos and after that, as usual(for him atleast) a long, long list of gods from various pantheons whom he's worked for and been saved with.

Next day, which was yesterday, he and Alabaster then discussed and went over all the possible theories that came to their minds about the situation surrounding Grundy and Andrew.

They were interrupted again, this time by none other than Clarisse who was apparantly in the mood for a spar. She already told them quickly that Frank, Jason and Percy were already 'busy' on having a 'triple date' and Reyna was currently called away on some business to Camp Jupiter.

And she believed Nico was the only one in the camp who could give her some fun sparring time.

Knowing Clarisse, and he himself not being one to back down from anything, Nico held a sigh and just accepted lazily, strolling towards the arena.

There he snatched a standard sword from a seemingly new demigod camper, faced an already fully armoured Clarisse with her nasty looking Maimer spear and then 2 minutes later she was sprawled out on the ground on her back, unmoving, her armour warped in, slashed and cracked in various places and the spear embedded onto the ground right beside her head.

She was moaning in confusion and agony as Nico walked away scowling, throwing the sword to the kid from earlier while he ignored the looks of shock and incredulement on the faces of all the campers who'd come to watch the spar, interested in seeing who would win.

The rest of yesterday passed without incident, though the other campers kept sending him looks from time to time.

Hazel and the others seemed to take not notice of the rumors of how Nico absolutely dominated Clarisse.

Back to the present though, Nico released a roar as he raised his left leg, spinning on his right heel anti-clockwise, decimating the last of the dumb holograms.

Rage finally sated, he bent over, heaving heavily before swiping his sweaty brow with an equally sweaty arm. His formerly red glowing eyes with wisps of black trying to escape from his sclera turned to normal.

"Still pissed at Grundy's escape?"

He turned to see Robin, dressed in casual clothes, hands in his jean's pockets and black shades hiding his eyes as usual.

Robin observed Nico, taking in his shirtless form only wearing black nike's and black camo pants. His entire exposed skin was coated in sweat, with his hair sticking to his forehead.

"What do you think?" bit back Nico as his breathing returned to normal quickly.

"Dude, if you wanted a sparring partner you could've just asked" stated Robin

"What makes you think I still need to now?" he asked, raising an eyebrow

"Well, I'm kinda in the mood to spar as well, but seeing as you're already pretty exhausted..." trailed off Robin with a smirk

Scowling, Nico cracked his head left, then right, before spreading his legs wide bending his arms, his left side pushed a little forward. ""Bring it" he stated

Robin was just about to slip into his own stance as well beofre they noticed the rest of their team entering the room. Superboy noticeably had a deep scowl on his face. Then again, when does he not?

Miss martian, however, on seeing Nico shirtless couldn't help but blush shamefully, considering she never thought he'd have such fine muscles hidden under all those creepy and dark clothes.

I mean, damn, look at that six-pack!

Fortuantely no one seemed to notice the blush before it thankfully disappeared.

"Glad you could all be here" said Black canary as she entered alongside Martian Manhunter from the other side of the room.

Uncle J'onn!" yelled MM as she flew over to her uncle.

Seeing the quick exchange between the 2 martians as he went to pick up his light gray shirt from the floor nearby, Nico wondered about going to the Underworld anytime soon.

As he and M'gann stood in single line alongside the other teens who were joined by Martian Manhunter, Black canary stood in the center of the training circle.

After Canary ordered Superboy to stay in place, she started talking about their training and proceeded to remove her blue leather jacket, though she hissed in pain, grabbing the bandages around her left arm

After the canon scene of KF getting his ass kicked, Nico only let himself smile, while blocking the laugh that threatened to break out.

So when superboy stated that the whole thing was pointless cause he he's sooo strong and invulnerable, he couldn't help but rhetort:

"Really? If strength is all it takes to beat the weaker opponent, why don't you show me?" asked Nico with a blank face and an equally blank voice.

"As if I need to" said Superboy confidently

"What? Scared?" asked Nico mockingly

Face immediately morphing into a full blown deathglare, Superboy stomped to the centre of the simulation area, followed by Nico at a distance.

Canary was just about to tell Ghost king to step back and she would instead take care of Superboy, when Robin suddenly told her not to. Wearily looking at the ghost king, she reluctantly joined the others.

"Ooh boy this is not gonna be good" said Robin with clear worry.

"Dude, I'm pretty Supey won't break anything. I mean, he may break something but it's not really something emo can't handle. Right?" asked Kidflash, unsure.

"It's not Nico I'm worried about. It's Superboy." told Robin

Everyone beside him who'd heard him had cruious faces, not understanding Robin's statement.

That was when they heard Superboy's roar as he charged across the floor towards the still standing Ghost king.

At the last possible moment though, Nico immediately tilted his head left to avoid a clumsy right hook, grabbed Superboy's hair as quick as possible, then poked his eyes hard with his other hand's fingers, total 3 idiots style.

This elicited a pained scream from superboy, who was now clutching his eyes with his hands. That was when Nico started his brutal assault.

4 jabs to the abdomen, one hard awkward angled reverse karate chop to each armpit, full-fledged fist to the teeth through the open mouth and 2 extremely vicious kicks to the nether regions later, Superboy was on the floor.

"I'm a lot stronger than I look. But I'm nowhere near as half as strong as you that I could hurt someone as durable as you. Just blindly punching and kicking all over you would've just given me broken hands and feet like the ones I have now" everyone could now see his clearly bleeding knuckles, yet he still had a neutral face on him as he continued "and you would still be able to break me. I targeted your weakest spot, your eyes, which while having your durability are still extremely sensitive as with all living beings that have eyes and then proceeded to strike other sensitive places, like your frontal teeth and gentials. I didn't outfight you superboy" spoke Nico before pausing and continuing "I outwitted you, played on your weaknesses, all without the aid of a green glowing space rock" he said.

Superboy who had now got up halfway through Nico's speech, was now glaring at him even harder, if that was possible.

"He's right superboy" cut in Black canary, who was now slightly impressed with the Ghost king due to his words and techniques in combat, drawing everyone's attention to her "Superman may be the strongest man on the Earth but there are plenty of people who have beaten him with just mere tactics. People like Lex luthor and Baatman are prime examples of this" she said firmly.

Before anybody could say anything,a screen popped up, showing Batman. After telling about Amazo with Robin expressing concern, Nico couldn't help but silently agree. A machine that can copy the powers of anyone? He shuddered to think what would happen if his father happened to fight this 'Amazo' by any chance.

After Batman explained their role to be the disassembled robot's bodyguards, Nico was just about to head towards his room to gear up.

"Ghost king, I have a separate mission for you" spoke the B-man, stopping Nico and making him turn towards the dark knight.

"Solomon Grundy is still on the loose and you're the only one who can track him down, i'll give you the co-ordiantes of all places where he was sighted." was all he said before the screen blinked out of existence.

' _well, guess I'm going to Gotham again. Joy"_ thought nico as he continued on his original path.

No one heard of this exchange mainly due to already having gone out of the room before it began.

The team would be notified of it though.

 **Unknown slum, Northern Gotham , 7:00 pm, August 3rd:**

As the sky turned pinkish orange again over Gotham city, with the sun almost fully dipped over the horizen, the hooded and dark armored figure of Nico di angelo leapt from rooftop to rooftop of all closely packed and some attached low-rise buildings.

"Urgh. I've searched this city more thoroughly in the past 3 hours than any of the last times I've been here! And not a single sign nor whisper of that disusting jumbo zombie! Yeesh! First an emergency trip to Camp-Half Blood to fend off a damn troublesome cyclops and Lastrygonian army, then getting kitchen cleaning duty for just accidentally burning _Hera's_ cabin down" he said 'Hera' with malice on remembering how her 'sacred' animal (cows) chased him across Australia wile he was still on the run from those damn evil lesbian archers "then listening to a tongue lashing from Hazel for doing that! How does she even know so many profanities from growing up in a time like the '40s? Especially when she was raised in a conservative society (though her mom _was_ a little off her rocker)" he said out loud to himself

And now literally looking all over Gotham city's every niche and crack it had to offer in it's dark underworld-ness to search for even a smidgen of Solomon Grundy's presence.

All the while stopping murderers, thieves, rapists, robberies and even domestic abusers.

He made the domestic violence's perps and the rapists beg for mercy, then death, then literally shoved a knife up their asses after bilaterally stabbing said knives down their pathetic penises.

Yeah, he really had to use lots of water and soap to clean the taint of his beloved knives.

The end result of being the more brutal version of Batman was a lots of unhealable fractures, maimed-in-the-worst-possible-ways bodies and just some physically, but mentally scarred people quaking so hard their pants were soiled and damp with piss and poo.

Yeah, Batman probably wouldn't give him points for using criminals as an outlet for his frustration on failing to find his target while executing his own justice as Hades's ambassador

on the wicked.

"Damn it! I think I'm gonna even more crazier than usual if I don't-" he paused at the edge of a roof and in self-monologing as he felt a certain unnatural presence enter his range of 'soul detecting'.

Turning his head left, he activated his soul eyes from under his mask's lens(the mask granted enough darkness alonside the now night sky for them to work) to sure enough, see the recognizble shape and un-life force of Solomon Grundy 2 blocks away in a seemingly dilapidated 3 storey apartment complex.

"Gotcha' now" he snarled before changing directions and stopping at the ledge of the roof.

' _Still not dark enough to shadow travel and I haven't even got my cloak to shadow-travel through it'._ Thought Nico frustratingly

The building in front of him was almost 5 floors higher than the one he was on now, but was too far away for him to latch onto any window sill on it using just one jump, mainly thanks to the sheer drop leading to the road almost five stories below.

 _'Guess I can test out the new grappling features Leo added to these things'_ he thought.

He then started to fidget around with the strange under-gauntlet like device under his left vambrace before forming a fist, stretching his arm out against the building across from him, then thrusting his hand forward a bit, causing a small 'poof' to erupt from the under-gauntlet, followed by a grappling hook with a sleek black cable coming out of it and latching onto the next building's walls.

Testing the cable's rigidity with his free hand, as the cable was still attached to the gauntlet, he took a deep breath before jumping forward.

Soon he was swinging through the air, holding onto the cable tightly with his free hand complete spiderman style before twisting at the right moment, causing him to swing leftwards and thus evading the building, instead now freely flying momentarily in front of the left lateral side of the building. The cable however got caught and strained against the wall's edge, making him losing his momentum. He then pressed a small button on the armor's gauntleted finger part using his thumb. This immediately caused a small explosion where the harpoon like grapple was embedded in the wall to launch out while the cable was cut loose from his under gauntlet.

As he fell, he calmly aimed his right gauntlet on the wall next to him, launching a grappling hook that soon got him to rappel himself towards the wall.

He then pressed the same button twice, this time the hook coming out and retracting into the respective gauntlet long after he immediately launched the left hook onto the wall of a building on the other side of the street.

Soon he was swinging through the air using these hooks with perfect timing and precision like Spiderman as he swung towards where he could see Grundy's half-soul.

Before he knew it, he was in the air above the apartment building sandwiched between a 7-storey building and a 4-storey building. Next moment he was hanging from the storey building with the harpoon/grapple in it's wall, his legs against the wall. Soon he started to slowly walk down the wall with the cable coming out of the gauntlet slowly. Once a suitable height above the roof surface (almost 10 feet), he jumped down with the hook exploding off the wall and retracting back into the gauntlet.

As he landed, he saw an open door leading to a roof access stair. He slowly walked to the stairway. Looking down, it was pitch black, but he could see clearly with his soul eyes. And he could also see Solomon Grundy in the ground floor's left most room.

Slowly descending the stairs, he was soon in a dark hallway with only closed and rotting doors along both walls. He soon walked down the stairs that was at the (his) left end of the corridor. He repeated this twice until he was on the ground floor.

Now slowly practically tip-toeing to make sure he doesn't step on any squeaky planks on the floorboard or any heavy clanking sounds from the armor (cause no matter how much Valdez and his girlfriend work on it, armor is still armor) as he made his way to the room where Grundy was.

The plain small entrance door was in a reception area through another open door in the corridor as he passed by it.

As he neared the zombie's room, he could hear sounds similar to crunching, chewing and loud stomping. His eyes narrowed ' _did he find another snack_?' he thought.

Pretty soon he was leaning against the wall next to the door that led to Solomon. He peered around the door's edge looking into the room.

Grundy's huge back was facing him, seemingly devouring something in his hands; good, he wouldn't see him while he aimed for that shiny white head of his.

The room was perhaps gray-walled from top to bottom. But there were other colors aside from bleak grey looking dark blue-black through the moonlight from the sole window; blood red, looking bright red in his soul eyes' vision.

And there was so much of it. There was enough to make up the entire volume of blood in a normal adult human's body. And it was flowing like a river from the damn monster.

Angry at the death of an innocent human and now their body being used like some sort of snack now, Nico's hands were trembling as he pulled out a sleek gray 12 gauge shotgun pistol with what looked to be a miniature grenade launcher attachment stuck to it''s side, similar to how normal rifles sometimes have grande launching parts attached to them.

He then took out a thumb-sized explosive round with 2 strange green glowing dots on it's opposite lateral sides, then slamming it into the grenade attachment.

He then took out a small laserscope and stuck it to the top of the dangerous sidearm, beofre activating it, emitting a small red dot on the ceiling.

Taking careful aim and making sure it didn't land on the wall in front or within his line of sight, the dot was soon on the back of Solomon Grundy's head as he leant sideways to allow his arm to perfectly aim.

' _That's right. Just stay still so I can blow your head off and rip out your black heart' he_ thought with rage on how the body was still being used as Grundy's dinner.

He had just been about to take another step to get just a bit closer for better aiming when-

-CRAAAANNKK-

That sound made 2 heads move.

Solomon Grundy's head turned around with surprisingly fast speed, eyes landing on the hard-to-see-in-darkness dark armored figure of one it's most hated enemies while Nico quickly looked down to the the now broken plank under his foot before looking straight into the blood-stained face of Solomon Grundy, the red liquid still wet around his mouth.

As soon as he pulled the trigger, in panic having not seen how the laser was now on Grundy's shoulder instead, Solomon released a yell of pain as the shot off grenade made a large, green-lit explosion and some strange green vapour substance, the combination of which ate through the cloth and rotten flesh and blood to reveal large yellow bones.

That arm dropped the half-eaten corpse of an black Alsatian breed dog.

His good arm however, picked up the bare bed beside him and threw it with great speed at his enemy.

Barely dodging the bed by a few millimeters, which crashed so hard into the corridor wall behind him that it gave nasty tremors throughout the building shortly, he had no time time to reload with another explosive as Grundy rushed towards him.

While it was night time outside and plentiful dark inside, there weren't any dark shades he could use for his transport.

A moment later, the doors of the building slammed open as Nico burst through it, running out onto the empty street.

He didn't dare look back as the doors alongside a good chunk of concrete wall cracked and broke apart as a screaming Grundy ran through it with a bare shrug, chasing the armored Ghost king.

"shitshithsshitshitshitshitshitshithsithsihtshitshitshitshitshitshiSHIT!" yelled the Ghost king as he ran for his life, Solomon Grundy closing in on him.

Just as the zombie was close enough to reach out and grab the ghost king with his arm, Nico grappled himself to a random building's wall via...grappling hook.

Leaning against the wall with his feet on the surface and the hook still in place, he called out mockingly to the zombie" Can't catch me now, can you?" he taunted before widening his eyes, whispering an 'oh shit' before releasing the hook and swinging over to the next building before the huge concrete rock Solomon tore by breaking the toad could squash him, subsequently destroying the wall there.

This process went on for a while, with Nico desperately swinging through the air displaying acrobatics on Robin's level between the high rise and low rise buildings while barely avoiding all the projectiles Grundy threw at him, which consisted of more rocks, some larger than him rocks, some motorcycles, some cars and a bus(he actually managed to run across the top of the bus with perfect timing before it started falling again).

Ultimately however, one rock as long and wide as his arms hit his back, causing him to lose all balance as he struggled to regain, failing to see the approaching building's wall he swung into and thus, subsequently slammed into it with enough force to form a massive spiderweb crack around a large crater with him in it.

Gravity however, took over as he was soon plummeting down to ground level, fortunately just through 18-20 feet, which was just high enough for his armor to take most of the damage and make sure nothing broke in him...much.

As he moaned in pain, lying vulnerable on the ground, he was soon able to hear and feel the large thumps and the vibrations they made through the street.

Before he could get on his feet upright, he was seized in a massive hand and was now looking into the eyes of Solomon Grundy, with his disgusting mouth practically frothing.

His arms may be tightly bound, but he could still kick with his feet.

So after non-stop kicking for about 5 seconds, Grundy was tired of just standing there trying to look into his eyes and just taking the weak (for him) kicks and finally started squeezing him. Hard.

Fortunately, the armor was durable enough to endure the force and not bend/warp under it, but it wouldn't last longer than a minute atleast.

' _Thank gods for Leo's ingenuity and my paranoia'_ he thought dryly before placing his feet against Grundy's abdomen and then kicking both feet at the same time.

The result was a large 'BANG' like a gunshot, with 2 bulletholes in Gundy's abdomen and Grundy now yelling, more in annoyance than pain.

He'd stopped squeezing, but the glare he was giving was now so strong Nico was starting to cringe a little. Just a little though.

That was when Grundy reared his arm back like baseball thrower.

' _Oh fuck my life'_ was all Nico could think before sailing through the air and over 2 miles worth of distance thanks to the zombie putting all his power behind that throw.

Good thing he has good timing sense to atleast break his fall with his grappling hooks.

Unfortunately, the hooks he'd launched couldn't stay embedded in the walls thanks to his own sheer weight, gravity and momentum.

Thus, he ended up still crashing into Gotham Academy's gym area through the windows with massive pain in his left side.

… **..**

 **Well damn! I finally posted!**

 **I'm so sorry I didn't post this chap the whole month. It's just, so many projects cameup during the past month I couldn't find any time to complete it!**

 **The 'yarns of hephaustus' Alabaster summoned are just the same yarns that Hephasutus made to trap and reveal Ares and Aphrodite having an affair behind his back, according PJO-greek myths. These same yarns appeared in 'Lightning thief', trapping Percy and Annabeth while they were trying to find the wargod's shield.**

 **I'm probably never gonna reveal Grundy's origin here, so instead I'll just tell it to you all here in this AN.**

 **Basically, around 2 years before current events, a renegade daughter of Hephaustus tried raising an undead army from slaughter swamp to fight and destroy camp-half-blood to get revenge on them for...you know, 'Last Olympian'. Instead the forbidden spells she used ened up accumulating a good portion of rotting corpses to from the bizarre Solomon Grundy. Nico and Alabaster sensed the 'disturbance in the magiacl and unliving worlds', went to Gotham, found the spell backfired on the girl since Grundy killed her instead of submitting to her like the spell was supposed to, and now went on a killing spree.**

 **This is after the 2 demigods met in LA. They also ended up teaming up with Batman while trying to hunt down Grundy. Batman already knew about the whole Greco-Roamn world thanks to Wonder Woman and decided to take their help despite his won "No metas in my city" rule for various reasons.**

 **They soon learned that Grundy is in a way immortal and can't die unless someone manages to destroy his heart and mind. They also learned that for some weird reason, while Grundy would randomly attack other cities like Metropolis, he'd especially violently rampage through Gotham in August since it's his 'birthplace' and 'month of his birth'. So they decided to form a pact to try and stop him permanently if they could while working together every August when he showed himself.**

 **Nico also badassly beats Superboy and shows him that strength doesn't mean everything. Course, canonically superboy will try and deny it.**

 **Next chapter, Nico and co. face off against the android with the powers of more than 6 Justice Leaguers and the immortal zombie that nearly matched Superman with just brute strength! Who will win? And can Nico finally humiliate the hunters of Artemis in the game of Warflag when their numbers are well beyond triple digits? WHAT?!**

 **Litestryke out!**

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 **Shit I almost forgot! I'm working on a naruto fanfic right now.**

 **Basically it's a sort of 'naruto neglect' type where Naruto, youngest child of the 3 or so kids Kushina and Minato have, is ignored in favour of his 2 younger siblings who have ½ kyubi each while he's ignored.**

 **He then ends up getting pretty powerful, but hiding it like a true ninja, and ends up on a team of 2 Ocs who alongisde him, each have other fictional characters' powers (Example; Jason Voorhees, Daredevil, etc) and his teacher being someone like Anko or yugao uzuki.**

 **This I'm also psoting as a challenge fic, In my own fic however, Naruto takes off after Guts from the anime 'Berserk', (ridiculously high pain tolerance, massive and badass as Dragonslayer sword but not dark and almost evil like him), one of his teammates will have the powers of Freddy Krueger to some extent and without his evil psychoness and the final person will have powers of Naruto from the neglect naruto fanfic's naruto 'The forgotten doctor'. Their leader, Yugao uzuki. Resident sword expert.**


End file.
